


Murder on The Skeld

by EliasAsgard



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Alien Impostor(s) (Among Us), Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Blood and Injury, Murder Mystery, Original Character(s), Outer Space, Polus (Among Us), Suspense, TRUST NO ONE, The Skeld (Among Us)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27433615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliasAsgard/pseuds/EliasAsgard
Summary: After two years in space looking for alien life, the crew of The Skeld is finally heading back to Earth. But as they leave their final stop on Polus, mysterious things start to happen. When one of the crewmates is found dead, it soon comes to light that two of the crewmates have been replaced by murderous aliens. But who? And will the crew survive when nobody can be trusted and their numbers are quickly diminishing?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	1. Introductions

We went looking for life but it seems we’ll return empty-handed.

The Skeld is one of many ships that set out to find other lifeforms in the galaxy - anything between bacteria and a type three civilization, really. We’re not picky. The main problem is that the galaxy is really fucking big. Even with warp drive, a trip to the TRAPPIST-1 solar system and back takes over two years and there isn’t much to do on the way. You wake up, eat breakfast, check the ship’s status, work out, eat lunch, analyse some data, play some games, eat dinner, and go back to sleep. The days have a way of bleeding into each other. It felt like an exciting life at first, going into space, looking for life on other planets. Of course it was exciting. I wouldn’t have spent ten years training to become an astronaut if it wasn’t. But now… part of me wants to say I wish something exciting would happen, but I really don't. If something went wrong now, we wouldn't just be ten people stranded in the middle of nowhere, we would also have failed our mission. We would have failed earth.

The night sky on Polus looks very different from that on earth but we can still recognize the constellations that lie behind earth. Amidst the sea of lights, I manage to identify Virgo. The brightest star in the constellation is Spica, even though it’s over two hundred light years away. But a little bit above it shines the star that we call our sun. That’s where we’re headed. Home.

I look away from the sky to the metal shed in front of me and start moving, my heavy spacesuit making me walk in slow-motion. In the horizon of this rocky landscape lies the giant white ship that is our current home.

My visor shows an incoming call at the top and I wake from my thoughts. I lift my hand to my helmet and push a button to answer. Pich’s face shows up on the screen, her dark hair let down to her shoulders. Her gray indoor-suit is buttoned down to display a purple gemstone on her neck. She had it made from ionite from one of the planets we visited last year.

“Is that you Buck?” she asks, probably having a hard time to see my face in the dark.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I say. “What’s up?”

“We’re gathering heads for a board game night. Are you in?”

“Yeah, just gotta finish up here,” I say. “Give us an hour.”

“Great.” Someone in the background says something that I can’t hear. Pich looks up, then back at me. “You want coffee too?”

“Sure.”

“How do you like it? Milk? Sugar? None?”

“Black.”

We end the call and I go back to the work I was supposed to be doing. I open the door to the shed and count six long metal cylinders stacked up on two carts. Those cylinders are filled with plutonium rods. Our ship’s startup engines run on plutonium and Polus already has a base with tons of uranium drilled out, so this planet is our refuel station. It takes a few weeks for all of the uranium to turn into plutonium, so for the last month, we’ve mostly just waited for our fuel to process.

“Hey Charlet,” I say into my helmet’s microphone.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

My speakers simulate the voice as coming from behind me so I turn around. I find the figure of another light gray spacesuit a few meters away.

“Let’s get this done,” I say. “Board games back on the ship.”

“Oh fuck yeah. Owen! Where are you? We need to hurry!"

I find a similar suit to my right, but with orange stripes around the arms. Owen stops admiring the rocky landscape and turns around.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

If people could radiate excitement in the form of visible light, Owen would be a black hole. But we get to work, pushing the carts along a flat road in the bumpy terrain.

“Last few minutes in this acne of a landscape,” Charlet says to lighten the mood on our slow walk. “I’m  _ so  _ ready to be heading home.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Just a few months on the ship and we’ll be back home.”

“Just gotta survive three more days on this pile of rock,” Owen says.

“Why… wouldn’t we survive?” I ask.

“Hell if I know. But it would be just my luck if something went wrong now.”

We reach the ship and use a scissor lift mounted to the platform to get the cylinders up and inside the engines. When the last cylinder has clicked into place, I close the door to the engine and come back down to the ground. Owen has just put the scissor lift back into its place under the platform when I get another call. My screen shows nothing but the interior of the ship's ceiling and somebody’s green hair at the bottom.

“Knock, knock,” says a cheery voice.

“Hey Grady,” I say.

Grady angles the tablet, showing his overexcited, clean-shaven face.

“Are you done yet?” he asks.

“Almost. Have you decided what you're going to play?”

“Mmmafia!" he says with a voice like an overexcited TV show announcer.

“Yeah, just don’t start without us.”

“They’re getting impatient,” Grady half-sings and hangs up.

“Oh don’t worry,” Charlet says. “Yuki wouldn’t dare start the game without me.”

We park the carts by the side of the road and climb the ladder under the ship's middle to reach the airlock. Once inside, we close the outer door and use a button to depressurise the chamber. Behind the glass door of the airlock awaits the security room, with its naked, white walls and three-screened control panel by the other end. Seams in the right wall hint of ten wardrobes for our spacesuits. The chair by the control panel is occupied by someone whose long, red hair covers the backrest like a curtain. Rachel turns around just as the glass door to the airlock slides up to invite us in.

"Hey," she says, sporting the same gray indoor-suit that’s been the fashion for the past two years. "They said you were about to finish up, so… I came to help."

"Nobody else volunteered?" I ask.

Rachel shrugs, seemingly unphased. She's too nice like that, always ending up doing the dirty work. As Rachel stands up to help, the tall, dark-haired figure of our commander enters through the doorway on the left.

“Everything done?” Pich asks.

“Engines fueled, carts pushed aside, planet kissed goodbye,” Charlet says, her voice now sounding from both my speakers and from outside my helmet.

“You did what?” Owen asks, turning his head toward Charlet.

“What?” she says nonchalantly. “I just lied down on the ground and kissed the inside of my helmet.”

Rachel makes a rather grossed out face and I can’t help but agree.

“What?” Charlet says again. “It’s just plastic.”

Pich says nothing, just shakes her head with a smile and helps Charlet get her helmet off. “Ahh,” Charlet sighs and flicks a lock of her short, cyan hair away from her forehead. “Fresh air at last.”

Rachel helps Owen get out of his suit first, then they both help me get out of mine. With some teamwork, we get our spacesuits off and back into their holes in the wall. When everything is done, Pich returns back to the cafeteria and Charlet and Owen head to the showers.

"Hopefully won't have to use those again," I say as I close the last panel.

"I can barely believe it," Rachel says with a dreamy smile. "We're finally going home."

"Yeah," I say, "this has been cool and all but… never again."

Rachel shakes her head in agreement. "I'm spending the rest of my days on earth, close to civilization. Never thought I’d miss my parents this much. It’s like I can feel them from four light years away.”

“I feel you,” I say, and lead the way out of the room and into the corridor. “But they can soon stop their worrying.”

You get a certain type of people when you recruit people for a two-year long voyage in space where sending a message would take more time than the trip itself. None of us have any partner or children waiting for us back home. We have each other, the mission, and copious amounts of entertainment. But we still have people we miss - and that are probably missing us too.

  
  


“Well?” Owen says, stroking his unshaven chin.

The thin figure of Yuki looks down at the six of us around the table and pushes back her yellow headband before letting out a heavy sigh.

“Crewmates,” she says seriously, “I’m afraid there’s been a murder. While you were all sleeping soundly during the night, Grady was shot.”

The cafeteria is where we relax, eat and play games together. The blue walls and tables add a sense of calm, as does the kitchen counter and fridge by the wall. Don't know if that sense of calm carries over to Grady though.

“Aw, come on!” he exclaims. “I just figured out who it is!”

Pich shushes him. “The dead can’t speak, Grady.”

“Maybe I’m a ghost.”

“Then be a quiet ghost.”

Grady groans and stands up. “Solve this quickly,” he says as he leaves the table. “I wanna be alive again.”

He joins Rachel, Walter and Benny on the couch by the wall.

“So Grady wasn’t mafia,” Charlet says, leaning her chin on her folded hands.

“But Walter might have been,” I point out. “We voted him out last round and now there’s only been one murder.”

“Unless that’s what they want us to think,” Owen says.

“Maybe,” I say, “but we’ll still vote one out until we win. If we vote out one of the killers now, the last one is at a severe disadvantage. They’d be better off killing as many as they can to win faster.”

“Unless they want to gain our trust, make us accuse each other while they sit at the sidelines,” Owen says and turns to his left. “Isn’t that right, Charlet?”

Charlet spins around. “Oh, now you’re accusing  _ me _ ? What did I do?”

“You’re the one who wanted to vote Grady,” Owen says.

“Yeah, because I thought he was the killer! Why would I kill whoever I just suggested we vote? That would just make me look more guilty!”

Owen smiles. “Maybe you should‘ve thought about that sooner.”

“Oh, now I get it.” Charlet turns to the rest of us. “He’s trying to set me up. He deliberately killed who I voted for so he could accuse me.”

Charlet turns to Yuki, as if she would give anything away. Yuki is playing with a few strands of her blonde hair, her face set on a knowing grin.

“What do you think, Buck?” Pich asks.

I take a look at Owen. He voted for Walter like the rest of us but he  _ did  _ try to blame Charlet even in the first round. But at the same time…

“Are we sure Owen is smart enough for such a move?” I ask.

Owen clutches his hand to his chest. “Okay, first of all: that hurts my feelings. But also: yes, good point.”

“It’s Owen,” Pich says. “I know his tells.”

“No, it’s not me.” He gasps, pointing at Pich and Charlet. “It’s both of you!”

I shake my head. “Pich wouldn’t go for a single kill as a mafia. I trust her. And Charlet would never risk getting her companion voted out.”

We all turn to Lee, who’s sitting quietly, munching on her lime bar.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking as clueless as ever. “If Walter was mafia, there’s just one mafia left and we’ll do fine another round.”

“But if he wasn’t,” I point out, “we’ll lose if we skip this round. They’ll get two kills next night and win by numbers.”

“Ooh, what if it’s Owen  _ and  _ Lee?” Charlet says.

“Yeah, I’m voting Owen in any case,” I say. “And we don’t even need your vote, Lee.”

Lee gives in - maybe trying to look innocent - and votes Owen with the rest of us. I look to Yuki for any kind of hint but her face is set on a secretive grin. I can only hope Owen isn’t right. What if Pich went for a single kill just to throw me off? She’s smart enough not to do that, but she’s also smart enough to do the unexpected. What if Walter  _ was  _ the medic?

“Owen, you’re hanged in the town courtyard,” Yuki narrates.

“Fucking bullshit.”

“And with your corpse still hanging for the crows to pick on, the village goes back to sleep,” she continues.

Oh no.

“And as it awakes the next morning, there have been no more murders.”

“Yes!” I punch the air in celebration. “We got you! We got both of you!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Owen looks at Pich. “What tell?”

“If I let you know, I won’t have it to my advantage anymore,” Pich says with a smirk.

We slide the cards over to Yuki and the couch gang return to the table.

“You shouldn’t have claimed to be the medic,” Pich says to Walter as he joins us again. “If you were  _ actually  _ the medic, you wouldn’t want the mafia to know.”

“I suppose,” Walter says. “I was just curious to see how long you would keep me alive.”

“Well, now you know.” Pich looks up at Yuki, the only one standing up. “Yuki, do you want to play?”

“Oh no, I’ll much rather watch you all scratch your heads out. New round!”

  
  


We take a bathroom break after the next round. I take a walk around the ship, starting by the front and moving to the back. Reaching the security room, I notice a red light by the airlock. I get closer and see that the outer door is open.

That’s weird.

Everyone is on the ship. I press a button on the panel by the wall to close the door, then another one to lock it. Just to make sure, I try to open it while it’s locked. A warning message shows up on the screen:

OUTER DOOR IS LOCKED

So there’s nothing wrong with the lock. I walk over to the control panel and click my way to the door logs. The inner door was opened and closed almost two hours ago, when Owen and I got on board. The outer door was opened just a few minutes ago. That  _ is  _ weird. I get up from the chair and I’m about to leave when I spot a figure in the corner of my eye.

“Whoa!”

I’ve already backed up against the wall when I manage to identify the short figure in the doorway.

“Don't sneak up on me like that,” I say, regaining my posture.

“Sorry,” Lee says, looking more curious than apologetic. “What are you doing?”

“The door out was open,” I say. “You got any idea why?”

“No.” She looks at the airlock. “Maybe somebody pressed the button on accident.”

“First the button to unlock it and then the button to open it?” I ask skeptically.

“Maybe it wasn’t locked.”

“Maybe,” I admit.

I honestly can’t recall if we did lock it on our way in. But at least it’s taken care of now.

“Well…” I say, pointing my thumb to the cafeteria, “Imma head back. Are you joining us?”

“No,” Lee says absent-mindedly and walks the other way.

I look at her as she leaves, trying to figure out what’s going on in her head. I’ve never managed to connect with Lee. She tends to keep to herself and doesn’t offer much in the way of conversation.

“Are you in or out?” says a deep voice from out of the blue.

I tense up for the second time in a minute but I don’t think it shows. I turn around to find the muscular figure that is Benny, his face as stoic as always.

“What?” I say stupidly.

“Another round of Mafia,” Benny says. “Are you in?”

“Sure,” I say and the two of us head back.

“There he is,” Grady exclaims when we arrive. “Come here, we need to get some killing happening.”


	2. Stoaways

The next two days consist of packing and preparing the ship. Every little item and piece of rock we bring on board has to be accounted for. Even the weight of the fuel has to be accounted for to know how much more fuel the ship needs to carry it. And just to make really sure we don’t waste our takeoff, we add two hundred kilos to our estimations. Once we’re sure nothing is missing, we drive the ship into its position a few kilometers away from the laboratory. This planet has been used a lot for landing and takeoff so the road to the launch pad is as smooth as a highway.

Finally, the day comes. Pretty much everything is done already but we spend the morning doing check-ups on the ship.

I’ve just triple-checked the calculations of our takeoff program and I’m on my way to look at the engines. Walter is checking the tables and chairs in the cafeteria, making sure they’re all stuck to the floor. I continue to the engine room and meet Pich in the corridor.

“Buck,” she says, stopping me. “I saw that two of the spacesuits are damaged. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” I say, blinking. “Damaged how?”

“Holes,” Pich says, crossing her arms. “You’re sure you didn’t rip or damage yours?”

“I’m sure.”

“And they looked whole when you hung them up?”

“I think so. Have you asked Owen? Or Charlet?”

“Yes.” Pich taps her arm with her fingers, taking a moment to think. “So did the holes appear afterward? Need to get to the bottom of this. But we don’t have time right now. In the worst-case scenario, the ones without spacesuits can seal themselves in navigation. If everything goes smoothly, we shouldn’t need them anyway.”

“Another weird thing,” I say. “The door out was open a few hours after Owen and I last came inside, even though I’m pretty sure we locked it.”

“ _ Pretty _ sure?” Pich asks.

I pull my hands up in a helpless gesture. I wish I could say I was absolutely certain but that wouldn’t be true.

“We shouldn’t stop and investigate the matter?” I ask.

“Stop to investigate holes in a spacesuit?” Pich says. “No. We have a schedule to uphold and we can look at the spacesuits after we’ve launched.”

“Always the schedule,” I say.

Pich looks at me with the same mix of concern and authority that a parent might when explaining something obvious to a child. “Yes. We have a lot of data about a potentially habitable planet and we want to get it back to earth as quickly as possible. They could really use the opportunity. This mission is quite literally greater than any one of us.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

“And Buck,” Pich says as I’m about to leave, ”if you’re feeling worried, just scan the ship for lifeforms.”

Pich is right of course. Since our mission is to look for life, we've made a habit out of being careful. Anything we poke at could bite back with immeasurable speed and strength. But Polus is just a fuel station. The first arrivals looked for life before they began building - even though the toxic atmosphere shouldn't allow for organic life anyway. There shouldn't be any reason to be worried.

So we leave it at that and I continue down the corridor, curving left through the engine room and taking a right into the reactor room. The large computer screen tells me we’ve got plenty of plutonium and plenty of liquid nitrogen and no radiation leaks. The log is showing no errors but I reboot the system just to make sure it can handle a reboot too. While I wait for it to start up, I hear quiet footsteps behind me. I turn around just as Grady strikes my sides with his fingers. I flinch back and deflect his hands.

“Hah!” he says. “I got you.”

“I heard you coming,” I say.

“Barely,” he says with a smirk.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two. We celebrated my birthday last month, remember?”

“Hard to believe,” I say. Grady’s clean-shaven babyface and green hair - and behaviour - makes him look more like a teenager than an astronaut.

Grady sighs, almost looking annoyed. “Just ‘cause everyone else here hates fun.”

“Charlet doesn’t,” I say, taking no offense from the comment.

“And neither does Yuki.” Grady wiggles his head to the sides. “But I don’t wanna be like a third wheel or anything.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “Give them some space, sure, but they’re still your friends. Didn’t you start learning Japanese from Yuki?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking… “ Grady looks down on the floor. “Do you think we’ll still be friends once we’re back home? Or will we sort of split off and get busy with our own lives?

“Oh, we’ll keep in touch,” I assure him. “Probably meet up every now and then.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Grady is about to leave but stops himself. “By the way, you were the last one to be outside, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“The outer door was open. I closed and locked it now.”

“Huh,” I say. “That’s weird. I noticed the same thing two days ago.”

“Oh,” Grady says. “Well… maybe someone wanted to eject some trash and forgot to close it.”

“Maybe,” I say, but I don’t feel convinced.

Grady leaves and I go back into the security room and check the logs again. The outer door was closed a few minutes ago - by Grady, I assume - but it had been open for two hours before that. You can’t unlock the door from outside, only open it if it’s already unlocked. Someone on this ship must have unlocked it. Or maybe there’s just something wrong with the panel. Maybe it’s leaking false positives for some reason.

I open the program for the door configuration and find a setting for multiple confirmation. I tick one box for “Airlock door panel” and another for “Security control panel” and hit save. At least now, you need two confirmations to open the airlock doors; one from the door panel and one from the control panel three meters away. As a final measure, I set a password on the settings, so nobody will change them back. That should do it.

I get back to the reactor screen and do my last checks. The engines are warming up and systems checks are all green. Everything’s going smooth as silk.

  
  


“Fucking shitballs on a stick!”

Charles's voice cuts through the air as I pass the electrical room. I stop and poke my head in. Dressed in an old-fashioned overall with shoulder straps, Charlet is standing in the midst of a sea of tall metal boxes with screens and buttons behind opened panels.

“Everything alright in there?” I ask.

She turns around for a second before turning back to the wires under the panel she has opened.

“No,” she says. “The console in admin isn’t getting any power but all the wires here are working.”

“So… the problem is somewhere along the way,” I guess.

Charlet looks up at the ceiling. “Yeah. Somewhere along the twenty meters of wiring hidden in the ceiling.”

“But they’re all colored. You can just check which wire is faulty in admin and pull it out from here.”

She shakes her head. “Oh I wish it was that easy, but they’re stuck up there. Someone has to climb up to get it out - and to lay down a working wire. Delays all the way. Whatever. I’ll check with Lee. She’s the smallest of us.”

“I’ll check the wires in admin,” I say and grab a multimeter from the tool box next to Charlet.

“Thank youuu,” Charlet says as she disappears into the corridor.

I make my way to admin and pull out the metal panel from the wall. Red wire is working, and so is blue and… aha. Yellow wire is dead. I head back to electrical, finding Charlet there already.

“Yellow wire is faulty,” I tell her.

“Great,” she says, putting the metal panel back in place to cover the wires. “We’ll deal with that once we’re in space.”

“Oh.”

She shrugs. “Yeah we figured since the engine is already warming up and because getting up into the ceiling will actually be easier in low-grav… It’s not like we need the console for anything right now.”

“Well, actually,” I say,” I was hoping we could scan the ship for life first.”

“Why?” Charlet asks. “We’ve done that several times already. Just wait until after the launch.”

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid but-”

I’m interrupted by an announcement from the speakers.

“THREE HOURS UNTIL LAUNCH.”

Three hours may sound like a lot of time, but for a liftoff that’s the final check-up point.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, and put the multimeter back in its box.

The crew gathers in the navigation room to check off all the tasks, confirming that everything’s running and nothing is lying loose. For the last hour, we just lie strapped in our bunks, waiting.

“FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH.”

We all have to click a series of buttons on our bed screen to confirm that we’re ready.

“TEN MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH.”

As I lie in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, it really feels like we’re finally heading home. Maybe we didn’t find any life in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system but we gathered a lot of data that we’re bringing back home. Another few months of analysis and we should be able to find a way for humans to colonise it. With the state of things back on earth, we could sure use another planet.

“FIVE MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH.”

Makes me wonder how it went for the T-1000 ship, which went to check on the Teegarden planets. They should be back on earth already. But we’ll have to wait a few months to hear about it. Once you’re light years away from someone, it’s faster to go there by warp drive than to try to communicate with them.

“ONE MINUTE UNTIL LAUNCH.”

I steel myself for the incoming forces and sure enough, the ship soon starts shaking.

“THREE. TWO. ONE.”

My body is pressed down into the mattress, becoming heavier and heavier. I struggle to keep my lungs from being crushed and I can barely move a muscle as everything shakes and the roar of the engines take over any other sounds. I feel heavier and heavier, reaching three times my own weight, until after a while, everything stops. The engines quiet down, the ship feels still and I feel lighter. Much lighter. Floating.

“ACTIVATING ACCELERATION.”

I’m pulled back down into the bed and feel how I slowly gain weight again. After a while, it almost feels like lying in bed back on earth. My screen says we’re accelerating at nine meters per second squared. I relax for a few minutes before the ship speaks again.

“ACCELERATION STABILISED. YOU ARE NOW FREE TO ROAM.”

It’s always tiring going through a launch, even if you just lie there and the takeoff lasts for no more than seven minutes. But those seven minutes really make you feel like you’re leaving an entire world.

Grady is the first to get up, heading to the front of the ship on light feet. The rest of us soon get up too, making our way to navigation to stare at the screens by the control panel. Two of them are showing the gray piece of rock we just left. Another few are showing the millions of stars around us. I manage to spot the glowing, white disk that is the andromeda galaxy.

Another hour goes by as we unpack, check the machines and eat. Walter makes us a nice salad, the chef that he is.

After lunch, Charlet reminds me of the wiring problem and we get to fixing that. I check again that the yellow wire is faulty and she helps Lee get up into the ceiling to lay down a new wire. It takes no more than an hour before the console is working again. I initiate a lifeform scan of the ship just to see that it’s functional. While the scan is running, I go and check on the reactor. I find Owen in there, standing over a ventilation shaft. He stands up as I come in, putting his hands to his sides.

“There’s nothing wrong with the oxygen, is there?” I ask.

“No, nothing wrong,” he assures me. “Just a bit inconsistent flow, is all. Oxygen levels are at twenty point five percent instead of twenty-one. I’ll try to fix it but… ” He inhales for demonstration. “There’s no noticeable difference.”

I shrug and start checking the screen for the reactor. Owen is in charge of oxygen, he knows what he’s doing. And if the levels drop below nineteen percent, the ship will sound an alarm. The reactor is doing fine so I head back to Admin to see what the scan says. The screen shows an equally confusing and worrying message.

TWELVE LIFEFORMS FOUND

I stare at the words, working my brain to try and figure out what they mean. We’re ten passengers. We’ve been ten since we left earth. I count the crew on my fingers, just to make sure. Walter, Rachel, Lee, Grady, Pich, Benny, Owen, Yuki, Charlet and me. That’s ten. It has to be some sort of malfunction. I scan again, staying in the room for the fifteen minutes it takes for the computer to finish. Again, it says twelve. I change the settings to only scan this room. It’s done after just a minute:

ONE LIFEFORM FOUND

Okay, so the scan seems to be working. I turn on another scan of the entire ship before I head out, taking a right to the cafeteria. Only Walter is there.

“Where’s the rest?” I ask.

Walter shrugs and gestures vaguely toward the corridors. I head to the front of the ship, finding Owen by the oxygen generators.

“How’s the oxygen coming around?” I ask.

“It’s definitely coming around. Just think there’s something wrong with one of the vents in the back.”

“You don’t know anything about the life scan in Admin?” I ask him.

“Nope. That’s Rachel’s area, isn’t it? Why?”

“It just seems to be working… inconsistently, that’s all.”

I continue down the corridor, which curves to the right and then left into the navigation room. Benny is sitting alone by the control panel, quietly watching the screens.

“Have you seen Rachel?” I ask.

“No,” he answers without turning.

I continue my round through the right side of the ship, passing the communications room and going straight through Storage. Hearing something in the electrical room, I head inside. Charlet is in the far back, testing some wires again.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“The stupid doors to the engine room won’t open,” she says. “Probably some kind of malfunction.”

“Or sabotage.”

Charlet looks at me with a puzzled face. “Why… would anybody sabotage them?”

“Dunno,” I say, afraid to voice my worries. “Try rebooting the doors.”

“Okay…”

She flicks a large, white switch next to the wiring, waits a few seconds, and flicks it back on.

“I tried the life scan by the way,” I tell her. “But it keeps saying we’re twelve people on the ship.”

Charlet’s eyes grow large. “What?”

“Yeah. So now I’m trying to find Rachel, to see if she can explain that.”

“She was heading to the back last I saw her. But… do you think the scan is right?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly.

I keep on moving, heading toward the back. The large, metal doors to the engine room are still closed so I slide open a panel by the wall. Underneath sits several buttons and a large switch. I switch it off and on again and the doors slide open. The engine room is empty but over the roar from the engine, I hear metal clang against metal in the reactor room. I take a peek inside but it’s empty. And so is the security room. Weird.

I keep going and find Owen in the other engine room, checking the vent.

“I didn’t do shit but now it’s flowing again,” he says with his hand above it. “Weird.”

“Have you seen Rachel?” I ask.

“You still haven’t found her? No, I only saw Grady in the cafeteria.”

I move on through the corridor and take a look through the doorway into Medbay on my right. In the white-walled room, behind four medical bunks, I find Pich and Rachel standing by a control panel by the left wall.

“Finally,” I say. “Rachel, I need you to come to admin.”

We head out and I spot Grady on the couch in the cafeteria, playing some VR game. When Rachel and I reach the admin room, we are met by a disappointing screen.

TEN LIFEFORMS FOUND

“No, no, no,” I say. “It said twelve before. You have to believe me.”

“Why would it say twelve?” she asks.

“That’s what I want to know. Could we have brought hitchhikers along?”

“I… don’t think so,” Rachel says. “Haven’t we scanned the ship several times already?”

“Not in the last few days,” I say. “We had to replace a wire and figured we’d do it after the launch.”

I initiate another scan and we wait in there for fifteen long minutes. When the scan is complete, the words that pop up on the screen do nothing to still my worries.

NINE LIFEFORMS FOUND


	3. Emergency meeting

“But… we’re ten,” Rachel says in complete puzzlement. “Why does it say nine?”

“Not going to wait around to find out,” I say and head to the cafeteria.

Rachel trails me to as I reach the couch and lift open a panel in the wall beside it. Underneath are several smaller buttons, a big, red one and a microphone. I press the red button and speak.

“Everyone come to the cafeteria,” I say, my voice echoing from the speakers in the room. “Now.”

Grady is already on the couch but he takes off his VR glasses as the announcement interrupts his game. Pich comes from the back of the ship, Owen and Benny come from the front of the ship and Lee, Charlet, and Yuki come from the middle entrance. That just leaves one person.

“Where’s Walter?” I ask.

They all look at each other, then to the corridors, as if expecting him to come out any moment.

Pich speaks up. “Okay, who saw him last? And where?”

“I saw him here,” I say. “About half an hour ago.”

“I saw him head to the engines,” Grady says. “Maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“We should look for him,” Yuki says. “Something might be amiss.”

Owen is already on the run. “I’ll check the front-”

“No,” I say. “We all go together.”

Owen stops and stares at me like I’m crazy. The rest of the crew is giving me similar looks.

“I think…” I say, barely believing my own words, “that we’ve got aliens on board.”

Now they _really_ look at me like I’m crazy. Some look close to laughter.

“This is a joke, right?” Grady says. “It has to be a joke.”

“It’s not a joke,” I say. “Half an hour ago, the console found twelve lifeforms on board. Now, it’s only finding nine.”

“Does that mean Walter is dead?” Benny asks.

“Maybe,” I say. “Probably.”

“But we’re nine right here,” Yuki says. “If there ever were aliens on board, they must be dead too.”

“Or they’ve found a way to bypass the scanners,” I say.

 _Or,_ I think to myself, _they’re right here among us._

“Maybe they’ve left the ship,” Grady suggests. “Maybe… Walter tried to throw them out the airlock and got taken out with them.”

“No, because I’ve reconfigured the airlock after its malfunction,” I say. “You need two people to open the door now. Did anybody help Walter open the airlock today?”

People shake their heads or murmur no. Lee takes a step away from the group, looking rather uncomfortable. Charlet begins to breathe rapidly.

“It’s my fault,” she murmurs, looking down at the floor.

Yuki is at her side at once. “Of course it’s not your fault,” she says.

“We didn’t scan the ship before takeoff,” Charlet says. “Buck wanted to but there was a broken wire and I didn’t want to delay the launch.”

Yuki puts her arms around her. “It’s not your fault,” she says again. “Nobody could have expected this. We don’t even know if it was aliens.”

“Well, what are we standing around for?” Owen says. “We should get going already. He could still be alive.”

“Fine,” I say. There’s no harm in making sure. “But we walk together. Nobody leaves this group.”

Owen leads the way, heading to the front of the ship. We start in Weapons, and move on to Oxygen and Navigation. We check every corner of every room but there’s no trace of Walter anywhere. Once we reach security, in the back of the ship, I sit down by the control panel and check the logs.

“The inner door was opened today, fourty-two minutes ago,” I tell them. “Then closed three minutes later. Then opened another two minutes later. Closed one minute later. Then the outer door unlocked and opened ten minutes later. You can’t unlock the door from the outside.”

I turn to the long wall and flick open all ten panels where our spacesuits were stored. The helmets are still in their place at the top but all of the suits are all missing.

Rachel looks at me with horror in her eyes. “Buck? What does this mean?”

“It means,” I say and look around at the crew, “that two of us are lying. Someone in here blasted Walter - and our suits - into space.”

“Shouldn’t we… stop the ship?” Grady asks. “Try to find him?”

“We would find nothing but a corpse,” Benny says.

“We still haven’t looked everywhere,” Pich points out.

“Fine,” I say. “I’d love to be proven wrong.”

So we check the left engine room, the medbay and the bedroom next to the cafeteria as well. Finally, we end up in the admin room, crowding around the table. Some of the crew still seem hesitant to believe my theory so I use the console to scan the lifeforms in the room. It’s done after just a minute.

NINE LIFEFORMS FOUND

Then I start a full scan of the ship. 

“So what actually happened?” Pich asks. “What do we know?”

“Well,” I start, “we know that just an hour ago, there were twelve lifeforms on board. During the next fifteen minutes, that number changed to ten. Another fifteen minutes later, it was down to nine. Presumably, that’s when Walter was killed and ejected.”

“So what happened to the aliens?” Rachel asks.

“What if they took the place of two crewmates?” Grady says, turning everyone’s heads to him. “Maybe they can morph to look like whoever they killed. Then, when they were about to throw out the bodies, Walter caught them in the act and got thrown out too.”

“Or they’re mind-controlling parasites,” Lee suggests. “Maybe they merged with two of us and that’s why the scan no longer finds them.”

Owen chuckles. “This is some sci-fi bullshit you’re talking about. That can’t be it.” He turns to me. “That can’t be it, right?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

An uncomfortable silence stretches on. Everyone seems to be on edge, looking around at everyone else. Nobody wants to stay close to each other, barring Yuki, who’s still consoling Charlet. At last, the console screen displays a message.

NINE LIFEFORMS FOUND

“Nine in the room, nine on the ship,” I say. “So who is it?”

The short silence that follows is broken by Yuki.

“My vote’s on Grady,” she says. “He’s the last one that saw Walter. And he just gave a detailed description on how the aliens did it.”

Grady looks as taken aback as he does offended. “What?! That doesn’t mean anything! If I _was_ the alien, why the fuck would I reveal how I did it?”

“To draw away suspicion, obviously,” Yuki says. “You want to paint the picture of a helpful crewmate to seem innocent.”

“Sounds like something an alien would say,” Grady counters.

“Stop throwing accusations around,” Pich interrupts them. “There’s an easy way to solve this.”

We all turn toward Pich.

“The medscan,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It can analyse our bodies and brains down to our DNA. That should show if anybody is not who they seem.”

“Let’s go then,” Benny says and leaves.

We follow Benny to the medbay, Owen and I going last to make sure nobody runs off. Yuki is the first to step up on the platform. Pich pushes a few buttons to start the scan and just a minute later, the machine beeps and Pich scrolls down on her tablet to see the results. She highlights two specific rows and shows the rest of us.

SPECIES: Homo sapiens

INDIVIDUAL: Yuki Yamazaki

“Looks good,” she says.

Next up is Benny, who also passes. Owen, Rachel, Lee, Charlet, and I also pass. At last, it’s just Grady and Pich left. Grady actually looks nervous getting up but he passes too. And so does Pich.

“So this did jack shit,” Owen says when Pich steps down from the platform.

“What do you mean?” Pich asks. “It shows we’re all human.”

“At least one of you is a liar,“ Owen says. “Walter can’t have ejected himself.”

“They could just be really good shapeshifters,” Grady says. “And can copy all of your cells, down to the entire genome.”

“Or brain parasites,” Lee says.

“Or that,” Grady says.

Pich shakes her head. “It scans your brain for injuries and abnormalities as well,” she says. “That kind of thing should show up as a warning.”

“So what do we do?” Yuki asks.

I let out a heavy sigh, looking around the room. Charlet goes to sit down on the platform, as does Grady. Lee finds a spot in the corner, sitting down on the floor.

Pich spins around in her chair, trying to face everyone in the room. “So who were in the back of the ship when this happened?” she asks.

“Okay, let's go through this,” I say. “I was with Rachel when it happened. Actually… the scan could have picked up on Walter right before he was killed and still showed ten people. So Walter died at some point between me going to look for Rachel and us finishing the second scan. Rachel, where were you before I found you?”

Rachel looks taken aback from being addressed. She blinks, as if returning to reality. “In electrical,” she answers. “I was heading to the back but the doors weren’t working so I went to medbay via the cafeteria instead.”

“Yeah,” Charlet confirms and nods toward me. “You came by a bit later and we got the doors working. Then I went to admin to look at the scan results and when I came back to electrical, Yuki was there.”

“And Yuki, where were you before that?” I ask.

“Taking a stroll,” Yuki says and gestures vaguely to the front of the ship.

“But where?”

“Let’s see… About half an hour ago, I was conversing with Pich right here.” I look to Pich, who sees me and nods. “After that, I walked through the cafeteria to admin and noticed an ongoing scan. I took a tour to the front and curved back to the electrical room.”

“I didn’t see you ‘taking a stroll’,” Owen says.

“And where were you?” Yuki asks.

“In oxygen, at first. Then I went to the engine to check the vent.”

“That explains it then,” Yuki says.

“So Owen was in the back of the ship,” Pich says with a sudden curiosity. “Around the time of the murder.”

“Yeah, in the engine room,” Owen says defensively. “Buck saw me there, I wasn’t _near_ the airlock. And Grady saw me go back to oxygen after.”

“Yeah,” Grady says, raising a hand. “I was in the cafeteria.”

"Did you see him go _to_ the engine room?" I ask.

Grady shrugs. "No. But I also wasn't paying attention. I was on the couch playing that trisolaris game. Walter left about when I sat down."

“And Benny was in navigation,” I say. “At least at the start of my round.”

“So that’s it then?” Pich asks. “Everybody has an alibi?”

“Not Lee,” I say, turning everyone’s head toward the corner.

“I was in communications,” Lee says anxiously, crumbling in on herself where she sits on the floor. “Just reading.”

“Can anybody confirm that?” I ask.

I’m met by silence.

“Lee’s the one who said we should fix the wires until after the launch,” Charlet says.

“And Lee was in Security the first time that I found the airlock open,” I say.

“That was just a coincidence!” Lee says desperately. “I don’t know why it was open.”

“Maybe she tried to get more of the aliens on board,” Pich says.

“No!” Lee presses herself into the corner. “I’m not an alien.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but that’s where the evidence points.”

“Great,” Owen says. “We’ve found one killer. Let’s not forget that you need two to open the airlock.”

“What about Benny?” Grady says from the platform. “He barely has an alibi.”

“I was in navigation,” Benny says, only a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “Buck saw me.”

“Yeah, at the start of his round,” Grady counters. “We don’t know where you went after that.”

“I heard him in navigation when I came back,” Owen says.

“Oh and we’re supposed to trust you?” Pich says with narrowing eyes. “You’re the one who was in the back of the ship.”

Charlet speaks up from the platform. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he cover for Benny if he was an imposter? There’s only two and we know Lee is one of them.”

“We _think_ Lee’s one of them,” I correct her.

“It’s not me!” Lee says with tears in her eyes.

“But it has to be,” Charlet says. “You’re the only one with no alibi at all.”

“But I didn’t know I was supposed to…” Lee’s words turn into wails as she starts crying. She buries her face in her hands.

“Lee has never been a good actor,” I say.

“But the alien might be,” Charlet says.

An uncomfortable silence grows in the room. Lee’s crying dies down and the discussion reaches a collective sigh of passiveness. Pich is the first to speak.

“So what do we do with her? There’s nowhere we can lock her up.”

“We could tie her up somewhere with some rope,” Charlet suggests. “Or cables if we don’t have any.”

“Nonono,” Grady says. “If that’s a shape-shifting alien, it could get out of any chains we put it in. We need to make sure she’s sealed in shut.”

“But there’s no room on this ship that can’t be opened from the inside,” Pich says. “I hate to say it but there’s only one option.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “We could destroy the panel inside the airlock, so the door can only be opened from Security. That would turn the airlock into something of a prison cell.”

“Yes,” Lee whimpers, a glimmer of hope showing in her tear-streaked face. “Put me in a cell, I won’t mind. Just let me live. Please.”

So that’s what we do. Charlet unscrews the control panel inside the airlock and checks that the wires alone aren’t enough to get the door open. Then we seal Lee inside. Actually, she walks in by her own volition, probably deeming resistance useless. Or maybe she feels safer in there than outside. Once the glass door is closed, I get this feeling like I’ve forgotten something - like there’s one more thing I could do to improve on the situation - but Owen interrupts my thoughts.

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s head back to the cafeteria and get this sorted out.”


	4. Dead body reported

“It’s hard to picture Lee killing someone,” Charlet says once we’re all seated around the cafeteria table.

“And we’re really not turning back?” Grady asks. “At least to honor him? His body?”

As the atmosphere calmed down, the topic of conversation turned to Walter. Benny made us coffee while we asked each other personal questions, going off Grady’s hypothesis that the aliens wouldn’t have access to the memories of whoever they were impersonating. Unfortunately, that hypothesis turned out to be wrong.

Yuki is sitting between Charlet and Grady, holding Grady’s hand while caressing Charlet’s shoulder. Pich is consoling Rachel, though Pich looks close to tears herself. Owen is just staring at the table, his coffee cup untouched. Benny is the only one who seems unphased, having finished his coffee already. I reach for my cup with shaky hands and drink, even though I don’t feel like it. I’m more angry than sad really, but I don’t have anybody to direct my anger at. We don’t even know if Lee is guilty. All I know is that someone in here is faking it and I hate that I can’t figure out who.

“Trying to find Walter out in space would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Benny says. “Except we don’t have a magnet.”

Owen snaps around. “Oh you think this is funny?”

“No.”

“Well, you seem pretty fucking stoic for someone who just lost their buddy.”

“I will mourn when there is time for it,” Benny says. “That is not now.”

Heartless as it sounds, Benny’s got the right idea. Mourning is a luxury we can’t afford right now.

“We can honor Walter by finding his killer,” I say, and look at each of my supposed crewmates. “Which is to say someone at this table.”

“Fine.” Yuki rubs at her eye before reaching for a button underneath the tabletop. The table surface turns into an interactive screen and Yuki clicks on a few icons to display a map of the ship. “Everybody add your pathing,” she says and leans back.

We each get to draw where we went, with the map ticking a timer while we draw. In the end, we have an interactive map that estimates where everyone was at any point during the murder. Yuki looks over the map, using a slider to change the time and watch our icons move.

“Right then,” she says. “Benny, it’s looking pretty bad for you. It could also be Grady and Owen because you confirmed each other. And then we have Buck.” Yuki looks up at me with an apologetic face. “You’re the only one we  _ know  _ passed the airlock during that time.”

“Yeah but… I’m the one who reported Walter missing in the first place.”

“Which would have been a genius move if you were the alien,” Grady says in sudden realization.

It’s like I can feel the attention shift toward me, and it’s not the good kind of attention. Grady has suddenly made me the prime suspect of the conversation.

“No,” I say, trying to seem convincing. “Without me, you wouldn’t have known Walter was gone until hours later. Who knows how many more they would’ve killed by then?” When Grady seems unphased by this, I add: “Oh for fuck’s sake, I’m the one who’s been leading this investigation!”

“And Buck’s the one who made sure we didn’t eject Lee,” Rachel adds. “I trust him.”

“But what if Lee’s the alien?” Grady says. “What if they both are?”

Pich turns to Grady with a long stare. “Grady,” she says slowly, “why are you trying to get the most progressive member of this investigation thrown out?”

Grady throws his hands in front of his chest, as if ready to defend himself. “What, I’m just saying he could have… okay fine, I take it back.”

Nobody says anything but Pich doesn’t let Grady out of her sight.

“I said I take it back,” Grady says with increasing nervosity. “I just… it sounded smart when I said it, okay?”

“Throwing accusations around will get us nowhere,” Benny says. “We need hard evidence.”

“We tried the DNA test,” Pich says. “Don’t see what better evidence we can find.”

Owen points a finger at Pich. “You should put less trust in your precious equipment,” he says. “Unless you want us to believe we’re all good.”

“It could have been manipulated,” Rachel says, more to herself than anybody else.

“Exactly,” Owen agrees. “That’s what I’m saying.”

The rest of the crew looks at Rachel.

“Manipulated how?” Pich asks. “It managed to identify us.”

“Maybe the… aliens uploaded their own DNA and replaced the real files,” Rachel says. “So the machine would falsely identify them as the people they impersonate.”

A short silence follows, broken by Pich.

“That has to be it!” she exclaims and stands up.

We follow Pich to the medbay as a group and crowd up behind her as she sits down by the control panel.

“That’s exactly it,” she says after a while. “Somebody pushed a change of the SNP data two hours and fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Owen says. “Remember who suggested we do the scan in the first place?”

Pich ignores him and clicks around some more. “And they took their time to delete the backups as well,” she says after a while.

“Of course they did,” I say. “They thought it all through.”

“At least the hiding part,” Yuki says. “They seem to be more interested in that than actually killing us.”

“So far,” I add.

“I could try to recover the data from the hard drive,” Rachel says. “But it can take a while.”

“How long is a while?” Pich asks.

“I don’t know. A few minutes if we’re lucky. Maybe hours.”

“Great. You get to working on that and we’ll-”

“Hold on just a second,” Owen says and gestures to Rachel. “Can we trust her to actually fix the drive? And not just destroy it?”

“I trust Rachel,” I say. “And if she destroys it, we know she’s one of them.”

Pich leaves the chair to Rachel, who starts typing and clicking around.

“We have a special program for data recovery,” she explains. “I’ll scan the hard drive where the files were and see what it finds.”

After a bit more silence, Grady speaks up. “So… should we just wait in here for it to finish or-?”

But before he’s finished his sentence, a loud, repeating buzzing over the speakers.

“That’s the oxygen alarm,” Owen says at once.

He heads for the doorway but I cut off his path. “We stick together,” I say.

Owen rolls his eyes and waves at the rest of the crew. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Rachel, you can stay,” Pich says. “As long as the rest of us stick together, you have nothing to worry about.”

We leave Rachel in the medbay and take a right toward the front of the ship. The loud buzzing reminds us to keep our pace up. Pich and I stay in the back while Owen leads the group through the cafeteria and into the next corridor, curving right to get into the oxygen room. He’s already pressing buttons on the panel when we get there.

“Oxygen levels are at eighteen percent and going down,” Owen says.

After a bit of frantic clicking, he slams his hand into the wall.

“Fuck!” he yells. “It refuses to go up! Someone has to get into admin to restart the analytics program.”

“We have to split up,” Pich says. “Two can stay with Owen and the rest of us get to admin.”

“Okay,” I say. “But remember who’s with who.”

Yuki and Charlet stay with Owen and the rest of us hurry back to the cafeteria. But just as Pich and I pass the entrance, I hear a heavy slam behind me, the sound almost drowning in the noise from the speakers. I look behind me and see that the doors are closed.

“Fuck!” I say, stopping in my tracks.

Pich looks back but doesn’t stop. “We don’t have time to fix that,” she says and keeps going.

I hesitate before following her out of the cafeteria and into the corridor. Fuck. We’re split into four groups now, counting Rachel. This is exactly what a murderous impostor would want. But I have to keep track of Pich.

“If you kill me now, they’ll know it was you,” I say as we reach admin.

“And the same goes for everybody else,” Pich says, who’s already pressing buttons on the panel. “If anybody dies now, we can still deduce who killed them.”

Not long after, the buzzing stops. My heart is pounding and that’s not just because we hurried here. I take a few breaths to relax. She wouldn’t kill me now, not when Benny and Grady saw us leave together.

“Let’s check on the others,” Pich says and hurries past me into the corridor.

She has barely rounded the corner when she speaks again.

“Well, shit.”

I follow her and find two metal doors where the cafeteria should be. Pich is at the left wall, repeatedly pressing a red button that does nothing.

“It’s been sabotaged,” I say and open a small panel right of the doorway. “Should work if we just reboot the lock.”

I flick a large, white switch among the many smaller ones, wait a few seconds, and then flick it back on again. Sure enough, the doors slide open and we step out into the cafeteria. I turn to the left.

“We should check on Rachel,” I say.

Not one second later, the lights go off. A dim, red light emerges from the floor, allowing me to at least see myself.

“Benny?” I say into the dark. “Grady?”

Nobody answers.

“I’ll go fix the lights,” Pich says from somewhere behind me. “You should get to Rachel.”

I turn around and see the silhouette of Pich against the row of red emergency lights in the floor. She disappears into the corridor and I keep going left, trying to find my way to the medbay. Another row of red lights leads me to the left exit but the trail stops abruptly by the doorway. I realize why before I even stretch my hands out to feel.

The doors into the corridor are also closed.

I feel my way to the panel to the right and use the switch to reboot the doors. They soon slide open, welcoming me into the corridor. Just a few steps in front of me, the lights split into two paths, one of which turns left. Again, the track stops abruptly.

From inside the medbay, I hear Rachel scream. First a quick scream, as if something scared her. Then a longer, panicking cry as if she’s being murdered.

I stand stupefied for a whole second before I feel my way to the panel and grab the switch with shaky hands. I flick it back on too quickly and have to do it again. When the doors finally slide open, I’m met by a dark and quiet room. The weak lights on the floor do little to illuminate the interior and I suddenly feel more scared than determined.

“Rachel?” I say weakly.

There’s no answer. The only sound is the distant humming from the engine room behind me.

“Rachel?” I say again, still too scared to walk any further in. Benny and Grady could have opened the door and got here first. Does that mean it’s both of them? Or did they split up? Fuck, why did Pich have to split from me?

I stand there for well over a minute, listening, waiting for an attack.

Then the lights come back on.

For a second, I’m blinded by the sudden shift in brightness. Then I look around, finding an empty medbay. Actually, no. By the floor, behind one of the medical beds, a pair of legs are sticking out, dressed in our gray uniform pants. I’m afraid to get closer, to see what I already know, but I have to. Behind the bed lies Rachel on her stomach, her neck twisted in an awkward angle. Her eyes are open but lifeless. I try anyway, try to get her to react, feel for her pulse, but that’s just my desperate mind trying to deny the reality. When I’ve made it obvious that it’s hopeless, I look around the room, suddenly worried about my own safety. I very much doubt this was a suicide, so… how? I was standing in the doorway, the only way out from here.

No…

My eyes stop at the metal grid in the left corner of the room. The vent.

I get up and kneel down in front of it. By sliding open a latch, I can swing the grid open to expose the air tunnel underneath. I can tell without even trying that it’s too small for me to fit through. Lee could maybe squeeze through but she’s locked in.

I hear footsteps in the corridor. I turn around to find Benny coming inside, trailed by Grady and Yuki. Benny stops as he finds the body, then looks at me. Yuki runs over to Rachel’s dead body with an “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

Benny gets closer to me, looking damn close to punching someone.

“I know what it looks like,” I say, “but you have to believe me.”


	5. Ejected

“I knew it!” Grady exclaims. “I told you it was Buck but none of you would believe me!”

I back up into the corner, trying to keep my distance from the approaching mountain of muscles that is Benny. Luckily, he stops just two steps in front of me, but his arms are ready.

“I didn’t kill her,” I say, loud enough that the entire group can hear. “I was just the first to find her.”

“Then who did it?” Grady asks incredulously. “Because we were all in electrical.”

Benny is blocking most of the room so I take a careful step to the side to get a better view. The entire group is coming inside, their focus either on me or Rachel’s body. Understandably, they look both horrified and furious.

“Oh, you are not getting out of this one,” Charlet says, coming up right behind Grady.

“How could you?” Yuki yells from the floor.

“They’re using the vents!” I shout. “The alien killed Rachel and escaped through here!” I point to the hole in beneath me. “That’s how they get around!”

“Really?” Grady says. “That’s your best defense? I repeat: we were  _ all  _ in electrical. And you were here.”

“Are you  _ sure  _ about that?” I ask. “Because Rachel died before the lights came back on. And if they’re using the vents…”

“Excuses, excuses,” Owen says. “I say we throw him in the airlock and see if anyone else dies after that.”

Nobody seems to disagree. They’re too angry, too influenced by raw emotion and groupthink to listen to reason. I’m scrambling to come with anything that could convince them but my brain is having a strike. There’s too much going on.

So I guess this is it.

But then Benny takes a step back and turns his head slightly to address Grady.

“You disappeared for a while in electrical,” he says calmly. “While it was still dark.”

Grady drops his chin.

“Yeah, because I thought I heard something back there,” he says, waving his arms around wildly.

“There’s a vent in the back of the room,” Benny continues and looks down.

Grady takes a step back. “You actually  _ believe  _ him? I don’t fit through there.”

“A shapeshifting alien wouldn’t have any problem getting a bit thinner,” I say.

Grady points at us. “You’re… teaming up against me? It’s you! It’s the both of you!”

“No,” Benny says and takes another step back. He turns to address the rest of the room, while still keeping me in his sight. “It wouldn’t make sense for Buck to be an alien and tell us that he saw twelve lifeforms on board. He could have killed several more of us before anybody had any idea what was going on. And killing Rachel just now would have been a stupid move, as we knew Buck went here alone. I think he’s smarter than that.”

“I don’t buy it,” Pich says, emerging from the crowd. “Buck could have screwed something up just now - maybe he meant to escape through the vent. Rachel was about to find out who the aliens were so he got desperate. The only reason he and I split was because he wanted to ‘check on’ Rachel.”

I feel like I’m losing my mind. It seems like every piece of evidence is pointing toward me. But then I manage to grasp at my memory, to recall the details.

“No,” I say, pointing a finger, “I said  _ we  _ should check on Rachel. You ran off to electrical when the lights went out and you  _ told me _ to go alone.”

“Because I trusted you!” Pich says.

“You were trying to set me up,” I continue. “You wanted me alone here so you could put the blame on me.”

“So… it’s either Pich or Grady?” Charlet asks.

"I know who my vote is on," Yuki says.

“No, it’s Buck and Benny!” Grady exclaims.

Owen slams his fist into the wall, silencing the conversation. “Will you fuckers make up your goddamn minds!?” he shouts. “We’ve got people dying here and your jabbering is getting us nowhere!”

“We’re trying to stop the murders,” Pich says.

“And how’s that going, huh? Seriously, I should just lock up the lot of you and get this ship home myself.”

“We obviously wouldn’t let you do that,” Charlet says.

Owen shakes his head, his face red from fury. “Whatever. I’ll be on the couch. Let me know when my time is up.”

And with that, he leaves. Charlet is quick to go after him, probably cautious to let him out of sight. The room goes quiet, as if Owen took the air with him.

“We’re just a bunch of cackling hens, aren’t we?” Yuki says after a while.

Benny nods, and I think I manage to catch a smile in the corner of his mouth.

“We should get back to the map,” he says, “get our stories straight.”

We put Rachel’s body in the nearby medical bed, deciding that it will do for now. Yuki hops on the computer and finds the hard drive Rachel had been scanning to be gone. It’s been ejected from the computer and could be who-knows-where by now. While that really sucks, I can’t say I’m surprised. The aliens are set on staying hidden. Rachel found a flaw in their operation and now they’ve patched it.

We head back to the cafeteria table and go through the same thing again. Everyone adds their supposed pathing to the map and we try to make sense of it. It’s easier this time though, as most of us stuck together. Owen, Charlet and Yuki can clear each other. Benny says that Grady went into the back of electrical and Grady neither denies it or throws the blame back. I’d like to say that makes him less of a suspect but maybe that’s just what he wants me to think. And then there’s Pich.

“I was about to go to electrical,” she tells us, “but then I realized this would be the perfect time for the murderer to strike so doubled back to initiate a scan for lifeforms in admin. When I got to electrical, everybody else was already there. Charlet took over and managed to get the lights working.”

I take another sip of my coffee and look to Charlet, who nods.

“When Yuki and Owen and I reached electrical, Benny and Grady were already there in the dark,” Charlet says. “Pich came in just behind us. Not long after, we got the lights back on.”

I look down on the table, where the map of the ship is still on display. I navigate to Display Settings and tick in a box for Ventilation Shafts and return to the map. 

Almost all rooms in the ship are directly connected to the ventilation system, but there are fans in certain parts, and the ship would tell us if any of those fans were destroyed. That leaves only a few paths in the vents. From the medbay, you can either get to electrical or security.

“Did you hear if Pich came in from the front or the back of the ship?” I ask.

Charlet looks at Yuki, who looks at Grady, who looks at Benny.

“No,” Benny says. “The electrical boxes make a lot of noise.”

“I just heard her ask if everyone was there,” Grady says. “So we did a headcount in the dark and a minute later, Charlet had fixed the light.”

“Well, Rachel died before that minute,” I say, “and I think I know who did it."

"Who?" Grady asks at once. "And please don't be wrong."

"Pich," I say, turning the room toward her, "you said you were in medbay when Walter died."

"Where are you going with this?" she asks.

"Well, we know Grady was in the cafeteria for most of that time," I say. "Owen would have seen Grady head back through the back corridor, and I'm pretty sure Rachel and I would have seen him pass through the middle of the ship. The only way for him to get to the airlock would be through the vent in medbay, where you were. So the way I see it, your partner killed Walter and hid the body in the airlock while I walked around the back. As soon as I pulled Rachel away from you, you used the vent to get to security and open the airlock. That’s how you got Walter out. And now, when the lights went out, you split from me and hurried to electrical and used the vent to get to medbay and kill Rachel. But when you came back to electrical, Grady heard you in the vent and got closer. So you took the exit at security instead and walked to electrical and got there just after Owen, Yuki, and Charlet.”

Pich leans forward, frustration showing in her brow.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she says, raising her voice. “I wouldn’t have time to do all of that because I was in admin!”

“But nobody can confirm that story,” I say. “Because you split from me. You couldn’t kill  _ me  _ because the others knew we paired up, but you had to split from me to stop Rachel. You got desperate and tried to blame the murder on me. And you almost succeeded.”

“That’s a complete lie,” Pich says. “Go see for yourself in admin. I started a scan and it should be done by now.”

“Fine,” I say.

I’m trailed to admin by Grady, who still doesn’t seem to trust me, and we’re met by an unusual text on the screen.

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM DISABLED

Well, isn’t that just awfully convenient.

We return to the cafeteria and tell the others. Pich tries to defend herself of course, claiming that the real alien disabled the system to set her up, but nobody seems to buy it. We decide to vote on the matter and while Charlet and Yuki look hesitant, only Pich votes against it. Owen is still on the couch.

Pich looks less than compliant as we stand up but Benny is quick to put her hands behind her back in a firm grip. She’s not getting out of that.

“Owen,” I say, addressing the couch. “You should come with us.”

He answers with his hand still covering his face. “I can’t kill anyone if you all group up, right?”

“No, but apparently the aliens have a way of sabotaging the ship,” I say. “We need to keep an eye on each other.”

Owen groans but gets up. The group is ready to go when Benny has another stroke of genius.

“You should go first,” he tells me. “Ask Lee if she saw anything. She doesn’t know we’re suspecting Pich. If she says she saw Pich come out of the vent, she is probably innocent.”

So we head through the back corridors with me in the lead. The others stay behind in the corridor while I get inside the security room and stop in front of the glass door into the airlock. I put my head to the glass, finding it hard to believe my eyes. But no, the airlock is empty. And the other side of it shows instead of a door, the empty vacuum of space.

“You can come in,” I tell the others as I move to the control panel in the other side of the room.

I can hear their exclamations of surprise behind me as I click my way to the logs.

“The outer door was opened just fifteen minutes ago,” I say. “By two people.”

I turn around to face the crew. All seven have spilled into the room by now, Pich still cuffed by Benny. Charlet is the first to state the obvious.

“So Lee was… innocent? Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fucking strawberry jam on blue waffles.”

“Someone help me close it,” I say, pointing to the panel next to the airlock doors.

Owen pushes a button and I confirm the closing of the outer doors from my end. I push another button to start filling up the airlock with air.

Grady takes a step toward me, separating himself from the group. “Well, that just proves it,” he says and turns to the others. “It’s Buck and Benny.”

I roll my eyes but I don’t know what to say to convince him. We know there are two killers left now, so any potential pair is suddenly bound to be a lot more suspicious.

"They who vote wrong on seven are bound to lose," Yuki muses.

"That's just in the game," Owen says. "We can just put the two most suspicious in the airlock and know we got at least one."

“Buck is doing his thinking face,” Pich says with her hands still behind her back. “He’s trying to invent a believable explanation. Trust me, I know his tells.” . 

And there we have it.

“Pich,” I say. “Why did you want to split from me?”

“To fix the lights,” she says. “It’s much easier for the killer to strike in the dark.”

“But we wouldn’t have needed to fix the lights,” I say. “If we just stuck together. That’s what you said thirty seconds earlier; ‘if anyone dies now, we can deduce who killed them’. That is true even in the dark.”

“Well, I got stressed. I just didn't want anybody else to die.”

“And that,” I say, “is your tell.You wouldn’t break from a working system just like that - unless you had something to hide. Unless you  _ had  _ to split from me to stop Rachel. And on top of that, you're the one who told Rachel to stay in medbay when we went to fix the oxygen.”

Pich looks ready to rebuke but Owen steps in.

“Will you two shut up already? We already voted on Pich. She’s going in the airlock. And Buck, if you’re so clever, why don’t you tell us who the other killer is?”

My hands rise halfway into a helpless gesture, because I’m not completely sure.

"My vote's on Grady," Yuki says. "He's been acting suspiciously from the start."

"Yeah," I say, even though I don't feel entirely convinced. "Grady's the only other person who was near a vent at the time. You need two people to eject someone.”

“No!” Grady protests. “It’s not me. What about Benny? He was at the entrance when we lost each other. Maybe he ran to security via the corridors.”

“That's a long way and back to get in less than a minute," I say. "And Benny was the only one who defended me. I don’t think the killer would pass up an opportunity to throw an innocent person in the airlock.”

“But maybe that’s just what he wants you to- ow!”

Grady shuts up as Owen grabs Grady’s hands and puts them on his back.

“Open up the airlock,” Owen says.

Yuki steps past him toward the panel and we open up the door.

“No, don’t put me with her,” Grady says. “If you put me in the same room as the killer, I’ll be dead in the morning.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed,” Owen says, “the rest of us have the same problem!”

“I’m sorry,” I say, ”but this is the best we can do. We can only hope we’re right.”


	6. One impostor remains

With Pich and Grady in the airlock, the remaining five of us head back to the cafeteria. Charlet and Yuki walk in the front, with Benny and Owen behind. I’m in the back, keeping an eye on everyone. I know now that Pich is guilty. The only question is who the other killer is.

We gather around the table again and start laying out the details. After Pich showed up to the electrical room, they were all in the dark for over a minute. It’s possible that Pich and the other impostor snuck away to eject Lee during that time. If that’s the case, Grady  _ could  _ still be innocent.

“So where was everyone during that minute?” I ask.

“Owen and I were at the doorway,” Yuki says. “I believe Pich went a bit further in.”

“And I was at the electrical box,” Charlet says. “Someone had put the system into reserve power mode, which is why the lights went out.”

“Did anyone actually see her fixing the lights?” Owen asks. “I couldn’t see shit - and it’s not exactly quiet in there. What if she snuck away for half a minute?”

Charlet turns to Owen, looking insulted. “Why are you accusing  _ me  _ all of a sudden? If  _ anyone  _ is innocent here, it’s me.”

Owen crosses his arms, leaning his elbows on the table. “Because we’ve just learned that the aliens can use the vents to get around. And when Walter was ejected, you were in the electrical room, according to yourself. Pich used the vent to get from medbay to security. You could’ve done the same.”

“But I’m the one who fixed the lights! Why would I-” Charlet stops herself and turns to me and Yuki with a face of sudden realization. “Oh, now I get it. This is just like our mafia games.” She turns back to Owen with narrow eyes. “You’re finding new people to get voted out so you won’t have to kill them yourself, is that it?”

Yuki gasps. “Is that true, Owen? I was never sus-”

“Stop it,” I interrupt. “Just stop it.”

Before I can continue, Benny stands up from his chair.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’ve heard enough cackling,” he says.

“We can’t let you walk off.”

“Then let me at least enjoy some lack of stupidity,” Benny says and walks over to the couch.

He puts on his VR glasses and earpods, effectively shutting out the outside world.

“Benny has a point,” I say, turning back to the table. “We can’t just accuse each other based on speculations.”

“Why not?” Charlet asks. “We have to go on something. And speculations are all we have.”

“Why don’t we just… wait?” Yuki suggests. “We have already caught the two people most likely to be impostors. If we put the wrong person in the airlock, we’re just risking their death.”

“Because we can’t go to bed as long as there’s a killer on the floor,” I say. “And I’m just not sure about Grady. I can’t say exactly why but Grady doesn’t feel guilty. Just wish there was a way we could…”

“...know for certain?” Charlet finishes. “We all do but that damn hard drive is gone, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”I put my elbows on the table, leaning my head on my hands. 

But what if there was some other way of identifying the aliens? Do they have fingerprints? Do they look the same under the skin? Even if we can’t use our DNA-

And then I realize I’ve been stupid. The solution is obvious.

“We can just upload our DNA again,” I say.

“What?” Yuki says.

“But the computer will have no way of identifying us,” Charlet says. “Does anyone here even know what human DNA looks like?”

“We don’t have to,” I say. “All human DNA is identical to ninety-nine point nine percent. We just have to compare the sequences and see which one is different. The hardware is still there. We can just print the results into a text file.”

Charlet drops her jaw and looks around the table, as if seeking confirmation. Owen looks skeptical. Yuki looks nervous, bouncing her leg up and down under the table. I turn to Yuki.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Yuki stops her leg. “I’m just afraid this will lead to more killing,” she says. “I mean, Rachel only died because she found out who the impostors were, right? And if we’re treading down the same path…”

“Well, we can’t get back to earth with aliens on board,” I say, “And we should be safe as long as we just stick together.”

Yuki runs her fingers through her long, blonde hair. “Let’s hope you’re right,” she says.

“Can we get going already?” Charlet asks and stands up. “We could be minutes away from figuring it out.”

Owen rises slowly, his eyes fixed on Charlet. I point a finger toward Benny but Yuki reacts before I’ve had the chance to say something.

“I’m on it,” she says and heads toward the couch.

We wait in Benny and Yuki before we walk the short way to the medbay. My heart sinks a bit as I pass the bed where Rachel lies. We covered her up with a blanket so we wouldn’t have to look at her but it's still clear there's a body underneath. The others can’t help but look at the bed, barring Benny, who seems particularly keen on  _ not  _ looking.

Being first in the line, Charlet gets up on the platform without hesitation. But her face quickly goes from determined to concerned.

“It won’t start,” she says.

“Of course it won’t,” Owen mutters.

Charlet gets down and rips open a panel from the underside of the platform. Head to the floor, she sticks her arm under to feel around. Owen gets behind her to see what she’s doing. I can guess from her motions that she’s first only flicking switches, then pulls out the power cable from the floor. She puts it back and waits a few seconds before confirming what I already suspect.

“Seems to be a power problem,” she says and stands up.

“Are you sure?” Yuki asks.

“No, but that’s the best place to start,” Charlet says and heads toward the exit.

She turns right, closely followed by Owen, who’s followed by Benny. Yuki and I watch the others from behind as we make our way through the cafeteria toward electrical.

“So what’s your take on this?” I ask Yuki as we tail the group. “Do you have anyone you suspect?”

“I don’t know,” Yuki says. “I was never any good at those detective games. That’s why I preferred to be GM instead.”

“Then you should know what we look like when we’re lying,” I say. “Do you think Pich is guilty? And what about Grady?”

“I… really don’t know,” she says with a tired sigh. “Could be either. Could be both.”

We reach the electrical room and follow Charlet to the second row of noisy electrical boxes in the back of the room. Charlet stops in front of a plate stuffed with a grid of gray knobs, most of which have their extruding line turned upward. Green lines and signs separate the cluster of knobs by room. Charlet quickly finds one in the ‘medbay’ section that’s turned to the right instead of up and turns it back on.

“That should be it,“ she says. “But the scanner worked before. So… the aliens knew we would try to scan again?”

“Always one step ahead of us,” Yuki murmurs.

“But that means we’re on the right track,” I say.

Owen crosses his arms and gives Charlet a suspicious look. “And who would be most likely to think about that?” he asks. “To mess with the  _ power _ ?”

“Anyone of us!” Charlet says with a rising temper. “You don’t need to be an expert in electrical engineering to turn a knob.”

“But what about turning the right knob in the dark?” Owen says with a raised eyebrow. “You would need to be familiar with the controls to do that.”

“That… is actually a good point,” I admit. “Unless Pich was carrying some sort of light source, Charlet would probably be the only one who could find the right knob in the dark.”

“But I was busy fixing the lights!” Charlet explodes. “The rest of you were all around me!”

Yuki steps in front of Charlet, as if shielding her.

“It’s not her,” she says. “It can’t be.”

“It very much can,” Owen says and takes a half-step closer.

Yuki holds up a hand. “Listen”, she says. “I think that they… can see in the dark. Think about it. We know that either Grady or Pich - or both - is an impostor. We’re saying that one of them crawled through the ventilation system to the medbay, killed Rachel, stole the hard drive, crawled back to security and together with their other impostor, pushed the buttons to eject Lee - all in the dark. Sure, we’ve lived on this ship for a while now, but to do all of those things in the span of two minutes, you would  _ need  _ to see what you were doing.”

“Huh,” I said, genuinely impressed. “I thought you said you weren’t any good at this.”

“That was before you started threatening my girl.” Yuki throws an angry look at Owen. “I don’t know about anybody else, but Charlet is innocent. You’re not putting  _ her  _ in any airlock.”

Slowly, people seem to divert their eyes toward Owen. Deep in thought, he doesn’t notice it himself. Maybe he’s trying to invent an explanation for himself. Maybe he’s just trying to decide whether or not Charlet is innocent. I know that’s where my thoughts are. Yuki is vouching for Charlet, which makes Yuki seem pretty innocent. And Charlet  _ did  _ fix the lights. I don’t think she could have snuck away to eject Lee while pretending to do that. But before anyone can voice their speculations or accusations, Benny speaks.

“Are we done here?”

It sounds like he’s talking about the conversation, but he nods toward the electrical box behind Charlet as he says it.

“Yeah,” Charlet says.

“Then let’s go back.”

Benny turns to leave but he doesn’t get long before Yuki speaks.

“We should check on Grady and Pich. Just… in case they are ready to speak honestly.”

“Doubt that,” Owen says. 

“Or if they’re trying to escape,” Yuki adds.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s a good idea.”

We leave and turn right in the corridor, walking through the engine room to security. I stay in the back, carefully watching the others. Benny is the first to reach the room, followed closely by Charlet, who runs up to the airlock door with panic in her steps.

“What the fuck did you do, you monster?”

Yuki comes up beside Charlet. I storm into the room, almost running over Owen in the process, as I try to get a good view of the airlock. Pich is on her knees by the glass, tears streaming down her face. Grady is lying motionless on the floor behind her.

“You have to believe me,” Pich says. “This is all part of their game. Grady admitted he was an impostor, then said ‘they will never believe you’ and snapped his own neck.”

I can feel my blood start to boil.

“That’s a lie,” I say. “You killed him. And now you have the audacity to fake tears!”

Pich looks to the left side of the glass, where Charlet and Yuki are standing.

“You believe me, right?” she pleads.

Yuki looks at Charlet, who growls back.

“Oh fuck no! You can deepthroat a cheese grater for all I care!” She turns to the rest of us. “We should kill her. Throw her out.”

And with that, Charlet heads for the control panel. I position myself in front of the panel by the airlock, blocking it from Yuki.

“No,” I say. “We can’t just throw her out. Maybe we shouldn’t have put Grady in the airlock. But killing Pich  _ now  _ won’t help anyone. We have a chance at bringing alien life back to earth. If we can do that safely-”

“And what if we can’t?” Charlet says. “What if she breaks out? We have no idea what these aliens are capable of. Next time we get back, there could be a hole in that door.”

The silence that follows shows that nobody had given the thought much consideration. Now that we don’t just think, but  _ know  _ that Pich is an alien… the idea of throwing her out doesn't seem all that inhumane.

I look around the room. Benny is unreadable as always. Owen has his thinking face on. Yuki looks between the airlock and the rest of us.

“Shouldn’t we at least get Grady’s body out of there?” Yuki asks.

“Oh, hell no,” Owen says and points at the airlock. “Whoever goes in there will get their head bashed in and then the other alien attacks us from behind before we get a chance to close the door. Now that she has nothing to hide, the airlock is a death trap."

"But we have to do  _ something _ ," Charlet says. "We can't just stay in here and watch her for several months."

“Okay….” I start, without any idea how to end the sentence. I look at Pich, where she’s still sitting or her knees, burying her face in her palms. Still pretending, even though we all know what she did. Even trying to ignore the anger boiling inside me, making my hands shake, I’m pretty sure Charlet has a good point. We don’t know exactly what the aliens are capable of. “Let’s vote on it,” I say. The others nod in agreement. “Who thinks we should throw her into space?”

Charlet puts her hand up immediately. After some consideration, Owen does too. I’m about to call it three to two when Benny also puts his hand up. Only Yuki and I vote against it. But we’re the minority.

I lift my hands in a helpless gesture. “Guess that settles that.”

Charlet turns back to the control panel and pushes a few buttons.

“Depressurising,” she says, only a hint of anger in her voice.

I push a button on the panel beside the airlock to confirm. Not one moment later, Pich starts to bang on the glass door.

“You can’t!” she screams. “Don’t do this!”

I can’t manage to look at her face. Her acting is too good. And maybe there is a bit of the real Pich in there. We can't know for sure.

Just as I start having second thoughts, almost convinced by the act, Pich stands up and takes a deep breath and turns toward the wall beside her. Charlet had the control panel in there ripped out, leaving a hole where four loose wires are sticking out. In a desperate fit, Pich starts attacking the hole, punching it harder than I thought possible. The sound dies out as the air from inside the airlock disappears but Pich keeps going, her knuckles now painted in blood.

"What is she doing?" Owen asks.

“Opening outer door,” Charlet says in a shaky voice.

I push a button on my end to confirm. The outer door of the airlock opens but Pich clings to the wall, punching the steel wall as if her life depended on it. She should run out of oxygen any second.

“Charlet,” I say. I turn around and find Charlet next to Owen and Benny, staring at Pich like the rest of us. “What’s behind that wall?” I ask.

“More… wiring, I guess.”

“Any idea where those wires lead?”

As I wait for an answer, Pich manages to crack a hole in the wall, exposing an empty space with more wires.

“To the electrical room,” Charlet answers. “More than that, I don’t know.”

Pich looks just about ready to collapse but with her last strength, she pulls out a bundle of wires with her left hand and sinks her teeth into them. She splits one wire and I look around the room to see if that affected anything.

"We should do something," Owen says.

"Yeah, great idea," Charlet says. "But what?"

Pich breaks off another wire. Again, nothing happens. And her throat is starting to convulse from the lack of oxygen.

Yuki moves over to Charlet and points toward the corridor. “We should get to the electrical room,” she says. “I think… ”

Pich is about to bite off another wire when Benny speaks.

“Grab each others’ hands.”

Then the lights go out.


	7. Fix lights

I find Benny’s hand in the dark and clasp my own around it. I hear more hands fumble around before Benny speaks.

“Owen,” he says. “Who are you holding?”

“Charlet,” Owen says, only a hint of reluctance in his voice.

“And I’m holding Yuki,” Charlet says from the front.

“Good,” Benny says. “Speak up if anyone lets go of either of your hands. Whoever lets go is the killer. If someone is attacked anyway, it’s either Buck or Yuki, who each have one hand free.”

Benny’s tactic only makes me feel slightly calmer. If the alien wants us all dead, this would be the perfect time to go on a killing spree. Even if we can figure out who it is, we won’t be able to defend ourselves against a murderous alien who can see in the dark.

“Alright, let’s go,” Charlet says.

“W-where?” Yuki asks. “To medbay?”

“To electrical,” Charlet says. “We need to fix the lights first.”

The line starts moving and I follow, guided by Benny’s hand. The faint, red light coming from the floor makes it easy to navigate the corridor. It also allows us to see the outlines of our crew but that doesn’t make Benny’s idea redundant. This way, we can keep track of each others’ hands.

“Buck,” Benny says in a low voice once we’ve begun walking. “Do you have any idea why she would kill Grady?”

It takes me a second to register that he’s talking about Pich.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe she just wanted to distract us, prolong the time.”

“Her safest bet would be to let us think we had caught both aliens.”

We reach the engine room and pause our conversation over the loud noise.

“So what’s your hypothesis?” I ask once we’re out in the corridors again.

“I think Grady figured out who the other killer is,” Benny tells me. “As is typical of him, he probably said it out loud. Pich would have no choice but to silence him.”

I shake my head, frowning in my confusion. “But… Grady suspected us two. I know it’s not me and I’m pretty sure it’s not you either.”

“I suppose he found a new suspect.”

We round a corner as I consider the idea. Who else would Grady suspect? Did he have any information that he missed to share? I’m about to follow the line into the electrical room when the doors in front of me start to move. Benny snaps his hand out of mine just before the doors shut close. The metallic sound of the slam lets me know he got his arm through.

“Hey!” I shout, banging my fist against the door. “Are you alright?”

The doors. I forgot about the closing doors, which the aliens seem to have some degree of control over. This would be the perfect moment for the killer to strike.

“We’re fine,” Owen says from the other side. "How do we get the doors open?"

I feel with my hand at the wall next to the doors but fail to find any seams that would hide a panel.

“I’ll fix the lights,” Charlet says in the background.

“Okay, listen,” I say. “There should be a panel to the right of the door that you can lift up.”

“I’m on it,” Yuki says.

“You should feel a switch underneath that's larger than any other,” I continue.

"Got it," Yuki says.

"Right. So flick that off and wait five seconds."

"And then what?"

"Then you switch it back on."

An eerie silence stretches on as I fail to count the seconds. The killer could be on the other side right now, going wild in the dark. The humming from the electrical boxes is enough to muffle the sound of any footsteps, maybe even the snapping of necks. I could be the last survivor already.

From inside the electrical room, I hear a metallic clank, as if a light object hit the floor. The doors slide open and I spot two figures in the dark: one crouching by the door panel and one larger falling to their knees in front of me. I recognize the large figure as Benny before his body collapses onto the floor. Yuki screams and the next second, the lights come back on.

I find Benny lying lifeless on the floor, a dark stain spreading over the back of his light gray suit. Yuki is beside the door, pressing herself against the wall in panic. Owen is standing by Benny’s feet, looking equally horrified and furious. He turns around to find Charlet coming from the electrical boxes, already pointing at him.

“You!” she spits.

Owen is quick to point back. “Oh don’t you try to blame this on me! You’re the one who split from us.”

Charlet takes another step closer, squaring her shoulders as if ready to attack.

“Stop it!” I shout. “You two, don’t move. In fact, take two steps away from each other and stand completely still. Yuki, help me see if he’s still alive.”

Even with my mouth shaking as I speak, I know we have to focus. First I need to see if Benny is still alive. If the killer wants to kill in front of everyone, that’s fine by me. At least then we’ll know who it is. I get down to one knee and start checking on Benny, keeping Charlet and Owen in my peripheral vision.

“But it’s obvious-” Charlet starts.

“Shut up!” I shout. “Don’t move. Touch nothing.”

Yuki crawls over to help me. I put my hands over the wound on Benny’s back, trying to keep the blood from spilling out.

“Yuki, check his pu-”

I stop myself as I look at Benny’s neck. A pool of blood is spilling out from his throat. Looking closer, I find a deep cut through the throat as well. Yuki puts two fingers to Benny's throat, below the wound, and shakes her head in despair.

"No pulse," she says.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

She leans over to his back and gestures for me to move my hands. I do and Yuki takes a close look at the wound. She nods and her chin starts shaking.

“The knife went straight through the heart,” she says.

“Knife,” I mumble, looking around.

I find it by Benny’s feet. A large kitchen knife, covered in blood.

“I’m sorry,” she continues, ”but he’s dead. There’s nothing we can do.”

I look down at Benny, at his body. His corpse. He was the last person I really trusted. He wasn’t supposed to die.

It’s starting to get to me now.  _ None  _ of us were supposed to die. Walter, Rachel, Lee, Grady… Everything was fine just earlier today.

My head starts spinning, both from accepting the reality of the situation and from all of the questions. Why are the aliens so insistent on killing us? And how do they keep sabotaging…?

“Buck?” I hear Owen from somewhere behind me. “Don’t lose it. We need you with us.”

I take a deep breath and get to my feet. I can’t afford to panic, or even mourn. If I lose it now, the aliens win. We have to focus.

Yuki is leaning against the wall now, seeing as Benny is beyond saving. “Maybe if I’d just been faster,” she murmurs to herself.

“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I should have realized sooner.”

“Realized what?” Charlet asks.

I take another deep breath and let it go. “That these sabotages aren’t caused by some alien magic,” I say. “Pich had to bite through the wire to dim the lights. The aliens need to be in contact with the ship’s system in order to sabotage something. Pich sabotaged the oxygen system when she went through our DNA files. Then she sabotaged the lights when she fixed the oxygen. It wasn’t immediate but she was always near a computer or panel before something went wrong. Same goes for the doors. She must have touched the door panels that she passed and somehow triggered them to close. And just now, the remaining alien did the same thing.”

“You mean  _ he  _ did,” Charlet says and points at Owen. “How is it not obvious?”

I cross my arms, taking a moment to think. “Because it would have been an incredibly stupid move,” I say. “Owen should know he’d be the first suspect, being closest to Benny. And you  _ did  _ let go of his hand. I heard you say you were going to fix the lights. You could have brought them with you.”

“Thank you,” Owen says, gesturing toward me as if nothing could be more true.

“So what if the alien gave him fecal instead of gray matter?” Charlet says. “It has to be him. I can’t be in two places at once.”

Owen turns back to Charlet. “What, you couldn’t possibly walk over here and back in a few seconds?”

“I’m not just talking about now. I fixed the lights last time too. That clears me from helping Pich eject Lee, which means-”

“Smells like bullshit to me,” Owen interrupts.

“Maybe get your head out of its ass then!”

“Would you two stop it?” I say in a raised voice. “Owen, you’re the one who complained about the rest of us jabbering before and now you’re doing the same thing. Why don’t we get to the scanner and get this cleared out?”

“Fine by me,” Owen says and throws an angry look at Charlet before walking past me.

“Fine,” Charlet says indignantly.

I bend down and pick up the knife - by the blade, to avoid touching the handle. It might contain traces of the killer, though I have little hope.

“What about Benny?” Yuki asks from where she’s kneeling beside his body.

“That will have to wait,” I say. “First we’ll have to see what happened to Pich. Then we’ll figure out once and for all who’s human and who’s not.”

It hurts to leave Benny’s body on the floor but we can’t start carrying bodies when there’s only three people left to kill. Any wrong move could be the death of us. So we head back to security, walking in a fine line with me and Yuki in the back.

“I suppose you think it’s Owen too,” I say to Yuki without letting Owen and Charlet out of my sight.

“It has to be, right?” Yuki says. “I know it’s not me and it doesn’t make sense that it would be Charlet.”

“Didn’t you clear him for the first time the lights went out?” I ask. “You walked with him and Charlet to electrical and you stood with him by the doorway when Charlet fixed the lights.”

“I thought about that,” Yuki says. “I only really know he was by the door when we did a name check, and then when the lights came back on. He must have quietly ran off to security in between.”

We reach security and gather in front of the glass. The outer door is still open, showing the dark and empty space beyond. Pich and Grady are nowhere to be found. The only thing out of place is the hole in the wall, where a few wires are still hanging loose.

I back away from the group to reach the control panel at the other side of the room.

“Yuki,” I say, addressing the one I trust the most. “Push the button to close the door.”

Confirming it from both ends, we close the outer door and fill up the airlock with air.

“Only one alien left then,” Owen says with crossed arms. “Good.”

“Yeah, and remember who said we should throw her out?” Charlet says, more to me than to Owen.

“Don’t start again,” I say. “Let’s just get to the scanner and see what it says.”

We form a line and start moving, taking a right in the corridor.

“Why are you always in the back?” Yuki asks, turning her head to address me.

“Because I’m clearly innocent,” I say. “I was outside of the room when Benny died.”

“But…” she starts, but interrupts herself. “I suppose. I just don’t like having someone behind me. Especially not someone with a knife.”

“Someone has to be in the back,” I say.

We reach the medbay and walk inside. I take a seat by the computer, putting the knife on the chair beside me, while Charlet checks the scanner.

“We’ve got power,” she says and steps up on the platform.

I keep the others in my sight as I navigate the computer interface. The scanner was Pich’s area of expertise but the process seems intuitive enough. After some minute, an alert shows in the corner on the screen. I click on it and get an interface displaying all kinds of medical data with abbreviations and numbers I can’t begin to understand. But I don’t need to. A few warnings pop up, telling me that the program has no data to compare the DNA to. All of its knowledge of human DNA got ejected with the hard drive. But I manage to find Charlet’s DNA data and export the billions of characters of her genome into a text file. The rows and rows of C’s, G’s, A’s and T’s tell me nothing of use. But they don’t need to. Not yet.

Next up is Owen and I go through the same process - ignoring the errors and focusing only on the DNA data. Once Yuki’s scan is also done, the trio looks at me expectantly.

“You might as well,” Charlet says.

So I get up on the platform and get myself scanned. Back at the computer, I create a fourth file for my own genome. Then I mark all four files and right-click them and choose Compare. All four files show up next to each other, highlighting the first difference between them - on row nine thousand three hundred and two. A few letters differ but after that, the strings go back to being identical. I click Next and find another difference a few thousand rows down. Again, the four files differ for only a few letters. None of them stand out. A few desperate Nexts later, I come to accept what the files are telling me. All three of us have human DNA.


	8. Who is the impostor?

“So what's it say?” Owen asks as soon as I turn away from the screen.

I sigh and glance at the screen again, stalling because I desperately want it to not be true.

“None of the files looks particularly different,” I say. “We all have nearly identical DNA.”

“How is that possible?” Charlet asks.

I turn to face the trio where they’re standing by the bedside, cautiously keeping an eye on each other.

“I suppose Grady was right,” I say. “The aliens can copy us even down to our DNA.”

Owen puts his hands on his head and sighs. “So much for hard evidence.”

Charlet moves closer to me to get a good look at the screen.

“But it doesn’t make sense”, she says. “Why would they go through all that trouble of erasing the data if it doesn’t matter? There has to be something more… something else they were hiding.”

“Maybe,” I say, “but I can’t read all of the diagnostics. Pich and Rachel could.”

“Wait…” Yuki says. “What if it’s Benny?”

We all turn to look at her.

“He’s the only one we haven’t scanned,” she says. “We don’t know what these aliens are capable of. What if they can survive a stab to the heart? What if Benny stabbed himself just to be left alone?”

“Well…” I say, “then we still have a problem.”

“And a knife,” Owen says, pointing to the control panel.

“Right.” I pick up the knife beside me and gesture to Charlet to move away.

She rolls her eyes and returns to the beds, where I’m out of range for a quick attack. I put the knife on the scanner, placing it so the blade is outside the circumference. After another scan, get back to the computer and soon have a fifth file and compare it to the others.

“Must be Benny’s DNA,” I say after a while, “It’s not identical to any other file but it’s clearly human.”

“Buck,” Charlet says. “I know Owen is the impostor and Yuki believes me. What can I do to convince you?”

I think for a long while. Owen does look the most guilty but I need to hear out both sides. Maybe his position makes more sense once I’ve actually listened. And then there’s Yuki. What if she’s right about Benny? We don’t know what the aliens can do, what they require to stay alive. Pich could still be alive for all we know. And that is a concerning thought…

“Okay, let’s do one thing first,” I say. “Then we can talk.”

“And what’s that?” Charlet asks.

“Form a line,” I say, “and walk to admin.”

We walk out and through the cafeteria to reach the admin room. It’s only when I see the glaring error message on the screen that I remember.

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM DISABLED

“Right,” I say, and we continue our walk through storage, into the left corridor and through a doorway on the right.

Communications is a small room with blue walls and a monitor on each one. The wall opposite of the entrance complements the screen with a keyboard and a chair.

The others line up by the right wall and I put myself in the chair to see what’s wrong with the system. After a few clicks, I see that a necessary service has been manually stopped. As I try to run it, I find that a few necessary program files have also been deleted so I initiate a program repair.

“Is there any way to trace back the sabotage?” Owen asks. “To a specific time or place or person?”

“A few files were deleted five minutes past five, “I say. “But before the communications system was disabled, all computers in the ship had access to the files.”

“Maybe Pich did it while ejecting Lee,” Yuki says. “There’s a computer in security.”

“Maybe,” I admit. “But she had a very narrow window of time. You three walked past here in the dark. Are you sure none of you went inside?”

“Pretty sure,” Owen says.

Charlet nods slowly.

A message pops up on the screen saying that the repair is complete and sure enough, when I run the communications system, it works fine.

With that fixed, we head back to admin and I initiate a scan of lifeforms on the ship. While we wait, I push a button on the underside of the table, turning a part of it into an interactable screen. Clicking my way to the logs, I find a big hole in the timestamps. It recorded the oxygen sabotage and the first lights sabotage and the fixing of the lights but some time after that, the ship’s computers became unable to communicate with each other. The next thing logged is when the communications system is back online, a few minutes ago.

After a few more minutes, the screen displays a message.

FOUR LIFEFORMS FOUND

Just earlier today, that screen had said ten. I swallow a lump in my throat before speaking.

“Now we know for sure,” I say. “It’s just the four of us left.”

“Great,” Charlet says. “Will you listen to me now?”

“To both of you,” I say.

We move back to the cafeteria and sit down around the table. The same table where we’ve argued time and time again over who’s guilty and who’s not. Only now it’s for real.

“Before you begin,” I say, “just know that fixing the lights is not an alibi. If you were the impostor - and knew exactly what was wrong with the lights - you could have needed only a few seconds to fix them. That means you’re no less likely to have snuck away in the dark than anyone else.”

Owen looks more than happy at that but Charlet’s face grows red with fury.

“Are you fucking-” she begins, but stops herself and resorts to an angry sigh.

“You know I’m right,” I say.

“Fine,” she says. “So first of all, you know that the aliens replaced two of us while you walked around trying to find Rachel. Since Pich was one of them, it makes sense that they were both in the back of the ship. It also makes sense that they hid in the vents before that. And Owen was standing right over a vent when you found him, right? I was in electrical, first fixing the door and then I went to admin and back after you had left.”

“Or so you claim,” I say.

“And Yuki saw me return to electrical,” Charlet continues, “so no, I wasn’t being replaced by some alien in the vent. Then we have the first meeting. Owen wanted us to split up to search for Walter-”

“Yeah, because I didn’t know we had aliens on board,” Owen interrupts.

“I wasn’t finished,” Charlet continues. “He has always been eager to put people in the airlock. First Lee, then you, then he was on the couch when we voted for Pich but he didn’t hesitate to put Grady in with her.”

“How is that a suspicious thing?” Owen says. “I wanted to get this over with, so I asked our top detective who the other alien was and I trusted him to be right. All I want is to catch the impostors as fast as possible!”

“Or maybe you asked him because you knew he wasn’t suspecting you at the time, and you wanted another person out of the game,” Charlet counters.

“I… don’t think Owen would try something like that,” I say.

“Exactly,” Owen says. Then he takes a second to think about it. “Wait, why not? You don’t think I’m smart enough, is that it?”

“I’m just…” I hesitate, not wanting to just say yes. “It would be a complicated and risky play. In our mafia games, you always accused people directly when you wanted them voted out. You didn’t ask for anyone else’s judgement.”

“So maybe he changed strategy,” Charlet says. “I’m still more innocent than him. I actually pushed to eject Pich - who we know was an alien - out into space.”

“Of course you did,” Owen says. “You wanted to gain our trust. You wouldn’t be able to get her back with us anyway.”

“Yes I would!” Charlet exclaims. “If I was the alien, I would just cut off one of your arms and put it on the control panel.”

“Okay, let’s try to calm down,” I say, putting my hands up. “Owen, wait your turn to defend yourself and Charlet… do you have anything else to add?”

“Yeah, that he’s been accusing me ever since we put Pich and Grady in the airlock. As if throwing two people out wasn’t enough. And he stood closest to Benny when he died. He should have at least heard him getting stabbed.”

When Charlet says nothing more, I look at Owen.

“Okay, let me explain myself,” he says to me. “I thought it was Pich and Grady but I wasn’t sure. And once I realized that Charlet could have used the vent to get from electrical to security and get Walter out, I figured Grady could be innocent. And as for Benny… I heard something but I wasn’t sure what, because there was a lot of noise going on and I thought Charlet was at the electrical box and Yuki was at the door, which made Benny and me safe. But here’s the thing: when we scanned ourselves the first time, Pich was suspicious of me. We know she was an alien now, so… it just doesn’t make sense, right? If I was her impostor buddy, she wouldn’t want to accuse me.”

“What did she say exactly?” I ask, having a hard time remembering the exact conversation.

“Oh she went on about how I had been in the back of the ship when Walter died so she didn’t trust me,” Owen says. “She was trying to throw me out - I was lucky Grady could vouch for me. But Pich did nothing to accuse our blue-haired friend here.”

“It’s  _ cyan _ ,” Charlet says darkly.

“Yeah well, I’m mocking you because you’re an impostor.”

“Yeah, real mature,” Charlet says without lifting her eyes from the table.

She seems to be making an effort to stay collected, kneading her hands hard enough to make her arms shake. I can tell she’s angry and I want as badly as anyone to get this over with but… I just can’t know. Pich acted convincingly right until the end. I can’t trust Charlet just because I want to.

“Anything else?” I ask Owen.

He takes a moment to think. “Well… seeing as Charlet was pretending to fix the lights, she was the only one who could make sure they had enough time to eject Lee before the lights came back on. And by the way, I also voted for getting Pich ejected. And I stopped you dumbasses from opening the airlock to get Grady out. That was a deathtrap just waiting to happen. So… yeah. That’s why I’m innocent.”

“Objection,” Charlet says, her voice colder now than before. “Pich only accused him a little bit so we wouldn’t suspect both of them and he voted Pich just to seem innocent.”

Owen turns to Charlet, who still refuses to look him in the eyes. “Except that if I hadn’t voted Pich, she would still be in there right now,” he says.

“You didn’t know that would be the case when you voted,” Charlet counters. “You probably thought everyone but Buck would vote for, and you didn’t want to be last.”

Owen throws his hands up and looks at me like that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s heard. Charlet is looking at me with held back frustration, as if the solution is obvious and I’m just too dumb to get it. Between them is Yuki, who just looks at me like she already knows the answer and is waiting for me to get it too. I let out a heavy sigh because I really have no idea.

“Yuki?” I say and stand up from my chair. “Why don’t you help me make some coffee?”

Yuki stands up, looking as surprised as the others. They’re probably asking themselves why I’m delaying the most important moment of this journey with trivialities. Well, because there’s no ticking clock counting me down. As long as we don’t let anyone out of sight, I’ve got all the time in the world to decide. Or at least until we have to sleep.

Yuki comes with me to the kitchen counter, where we still have a view of the table. I push a button by the sink to start heating the coffee and pluck four cups from the magnetic shelf above the counter. Even with my back turned to the table, I’m not particularly scared for them. The impostor wants to stay hidden. They won’t kill unless they can blame it on someone else.

“It has to be Owen,” Yuki says from beside me. “Surely you realize that now?”

“Why? Anything that absolutely clears Charlet?”

“She stopped Pich from escaping the airlock. And she fixed the scanner for us. And she fixed the lights.”

I roll my eyes. Yuki is clearly biased, magnifying what little evidence she has to seem like a strong argument for Charlet’s innocence.

“She could’ve done those things just to seem innocent,” I say. “None of that is definitive.”

“Why don’t you put both of them in the airlock if you’re so unsure?” Yuki asks.

“Because I’d kill an innocent person.”

And… can I really trust Yuki? She seems the most innocent of the three but… is she?

The sink beeps and I turn around and turn and push another button to dispense coffee from the tap. Yuki fills the other cups with varying parts of coffee and milk. No, it can’t be her. She was fixing the door when Benny died. And she hasn’t tried to accuse anyone. She even protected Charlet when we were starting to suspect her. It’s thanks to Yuki that we know the aliens can see in the dark.

Yuki finishes filling the cups and hands me what I assume is Owen’s. Failing to remember anything suspicious Yuki has said or done, I head back to the table with two one cup in each hand. I slide one over to Owen, who seems disinterested. Yuki gives one of her cups to Charlet before sitting down opposite of me. An impatient silence hangs in the air but I try to not let it rush me. I take a careful sip of my coffee and resort to blowing on it for now.

Yuki puts down her cup and starts tugging at her hair. “Buck?” she says, looking up at me. “Have you made up your mind?”

I lower my cup but keep it in my hands to prey on the heat.

“Charlet,” I say, “after Rachel died and everyone started accusing everyone else, Owen left the group and you followed him here. Did you keep him under sight the whole time?”

“Why?” Charlet asks.

“Just answer the question. Honestly.”

“Yes,” she says bitterly.

“And Owen,” I say, “did you keep an eye on Charlet during that time?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Wasn’t about to let her stab me in the back when it was just the two of us.”

I take another sip of my coffee and put the cup down beside me.

Yuki raises her hands in an impatient gesture. “Well? Which one do you think it is?”

“Can I think for a second?” I ask. My eyes are already fixed on the table but I hear them murmur agreeingly.

This is our chance. I know I can figure this out. I just have to think like this mission depends on it. Using that as motivation, I try to consider everything I know. Why did Grady have to die? What did he know or who did he suspect? Was there anyone who tried to protect Pich, or that she tried to protect? Is there anything that doesn’t match up in their stories? Who did what, who voted for who, who claims to have been where… Yes. Now I see it. Someone’s supposed motivations don’t add up with their actions.

“Alright,” I say and look up from the table. “I’ve figured it out.”


	9. Vote

“Well?” Yuki says, stroking her long hair. “Don’t keep us on needles.”

“Tell us already,” Charlet says with an annoyed stare.

“And you better not be wrong,” Owen adds from my left.

I look at my three supposed crewmates sitting around the cafeteria table as I take a moment to double-check my conclusions. The more I think about it, the more it all makes sense. I never should have let her touch that computer…

“Owen,” I say, “you said Pich accused you in our first discussion.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember what you said just before that?”

Owen looks up at the ceiling as he recalls. “I… was questioning Yuki’s pathing.”

“And Charlet,” I say, satisfied with the answer, “do you know where you got the idea that Pich could escape the airlock?”

“I was just… upset she had killed Grady so I figured we…” Charlet trails off for a moment. “Wait. It was Yuki who brought it up. That’s why we went to the airlock in the first place.”

“Right, “I say. “So Yuki, why didn’t you vote to throw Pich out?”

All eyes turn to Yuki, still running her fingers through her hair.

“I just… wasn’t sure Grady was dead,” she says. “That’s why I suggested we check on him first.”

“Which could have turned into a murder spree,” I say. “Isn’t that right, Owen?”

Owen takes a sip of his coffee, looking at me and then at Yuki. "Right," he says with a suspicious glare.

“I’ll tell you why she didn’t vote,” I say. “Because Benny raised his hand at the last second. Without him, it would have been two against three and Pich would have stayed in there. After another kill, Yuki could have used the next victim’s torn-off arm to get Pich back on board.”

Charlet turns to me like an owl staring down an idiot.

“This is ridiculous,” she says. “I’ve been telling you for an hour that it’s Owen and now you’re pointing fingers at Yuki?”

“Think back to when we’d just found out Walter’s was gone,” I say. “Yuki said she had been roaming around the front of the ship. But up until you found her in the back of electrical, no one but Pich could confirm any of that.”

“So what if I didn’t have an alibi?” Yuki says. “Neither did Lee, and she was clearly innocent.”  
“But isn’t it an incredible coincidence,” I continue, “that you _just_ missed Owen walking to the back of the ship and then _just_ missed Charlet who went to check the admin table? You must have been rather lucky to not run into anyone.”

“So what if she got lucky?” Charlet says. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It’s evidence pointing toward her,” I say. “It just isn’t conclusive.”

“So do you have anything conclusive?” Owen asks.

I lean my elbows on the table. Once I’ve replaced the hypothetical role of the impostor with Yuki, it all starts to make sense.

“I believe I do,” I say. “The first time that the lights went out, Rachel was killed and Lee was ejected. We can’t definitively say which one of you left electrical to eject Lee but there’s one more thing. Pich had to sabotage the communications system to cover for her story. But I don’t think she had the time to, because the logs recorded the lights coming back on. That means someone sabotaged communications _after_ the lights came back on. And you all walked back to to medbay together, right?”

“That’s right,” Owen says.

“And once you two had left the rest of us in medbay, Yuki used the computer to check the hard drive. Huh,” I say, realizing something. “Maybe that’s what Grady figured out. Someone had sabotaged communications to cover for Pich. And the only one we saw use a computer was Yuki. It only makes sense he would suspect her once he realized it wasn’t me or Benny. He did suspect her at the very start.”

“No… that’s a lie,” Yuki says and turns to Charlet. “He’s lying. He’s the one who got on the computer.”  
Charlet looks as confused as ever, eyes darting between the three of us.

“You trust me, right Charlet?” Yuki pleads. “I defended you. They wanted to throw you out but I believed in you. You have to do the same for me.”

Charlet turns to me. “Wait… “ she says. “Yuki can’t have killed Benny. She was fixing the door at the time.”

“And part of fixing the door means you have to wait a few seconds,” I say. “She had time to step away and stab him. And… Come to think of it, she found the door panel very fast. Almost as if she could see it. Even in the dark.”

“But… Yuki’s the one who figured out that the aliens can see in the dark,” Charlet says.

“And how do you think she figured that out?” I ask.

“No, but… why would she tell us?”

I take a long look at Yuki - or rather, the alien pretending to be her.

“To defend you,” I say. “To gain your trust. She wanted to make sure that the last people alive thought she was innocent.”

“No,” Yuki says. “That’s not it at all. Babe, you have to believe me.”

Charlet looks like her entire world has collapsed. “I… want to.”

Yuki leans closer, touching Charlet’s hand. “I’ve been at your side this entire time. I could have killed you at the oxygen failure. I could have killed Owen and _blamed_ you, but I didn’t. I voted to put Pich in the airlock. It _can’t_ be me. You know that, right?”

“Then who?” Charlet says with tears in her eyes.

“I thought it was Owen just like you,” Yuki says, “but now Buck is outright lying so… it has to be him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Owen says. “He was outside the room when Benny died. Buck is clear.”

“Unless he stabbed him before he closed the doors,” Yuki counters. “He had one hand free.”

“And so did you!” Owen says in sudden realization. “That’s how you closed the doors.”

“Charlet,” I say, gaining her attention. “Just look at our actions. I’ve led this investigation, trying to figure out who the aliens are. Yuki wanted us to stop looking and hope that the aliens would spare us. How can you not believe me?”

“Because… I don’t want to, alright?” Charlet says with tears in her eyes. “Because I don’t want to believe that my girlfriend is something else than she says. Because I… love her and I couldn’t forgive myself if I lost her.”

Tears are streaming down her face now and my own vision is getting blurry. I wipe at my eyes and take a deep breath. None of this is fair. We didn’t ask to be put in this situation. We haven’t done anything to deserve it. It’s just the cards we were dealt. 

“I get that,” I say. “But what I’m saying is that you already have. Because that’s not actually your girlfriend sitting next to you That’s an impostor who’s playing a convincing role so you’ll keep her alive.”

Charlet turns to Yuki, who shakes her head desperately.

“You can’t let him get into your head,” she says, taking Charlet’s hands in hers. “You know who I am. Remember when we first set out on this journey and you thought you had to bury those feelings for the sake of the mission? Well I thought the same thing. For months, I tried to avoid you and ignore what I was feeling. But you didn’t. You _trusted_ your emotions and told me what you felt and I couldn’t be happier. And right now, I need you to do the same thing.”

“That,” I say, “is a real low point. Now you’re toying with her emotions?”

“And you aren’t?” Yuki shouts back.

Her eyes are also filling up with tears now. She seems so genuine, so real. But I can’t let that get to me. Pich was acting innocent even in the airlock.

“We already know the aliens have access to our memories,” Owen says. “Don’t let her manipulate you.”

Yuki points at me. “ _He’s_ the one trying to manipulate _you_.” She gasps, as if realizing something. “And I can prove it.”

“How?” Owen asks skeptically.  
Yuki points at me. “Buck is the one who put a double confirmation on the airlock. That means he’s the only person who could have _removed_ that feature, and ejected someone on his own. He could have killed Rachel _and_ ejected Lee while we were all in electrical. If we look closely at the logs right now, I can guarantee it says only one person ejected Lee.”

Owen sighs loudly and leans back in his chair. “Alright,” he says and leans on the table. “Let’s get this over with. First stop in weapons. Then we’ll go and see how your story holds up.”

Owen stands up and I stare at him with a feeling of betrayal.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe her,” I say.

“Hey, she’s promising hard proof,” he says. “If she’s wrong, we’ve got the airlock right there.”

I stand up, keeping my eyes fixed on the impostor. She stares back, mimicking my incredulous expression.

“You two, get in front,” Charlet says. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

We move toward the front of the ship and get in a single file as we reach the corridor. Yuki has no issue taking the lead. She knows I wouldn’t attack her.

“So now you trust me?” Owen says from behind me.

“They’re calling each other out for lying,” Charlet says. “That means it’s one of them for sure and that means both of us are safe.”

We take a left in the corridor and enter what is more like an extension of the corridor than a room. Yuki and I stop obediently by the wall. Owen walks up to the wall opposite of us, where a seam in the white plastic hints at a hidden panel. He taps a code into a keypad at the wall, making the panel slide up to reveal a weapons rack. Out of the various handguns hanging in place, Owen grabs an M&P 4.0 Compact and a magazine. The 4.0 Compact uses bullets that flatten out once they hit a body to maximize the damage.

“Never had to shoot an alien before,” Owen says as he loads the gun, “but this should do it.”

“Give me one,” Charlet says and takes a step closer.

Owen responds with a hesitant look.

“You know I’m safe,” Charlet says. “If anything happens, it’s better if we can both defend ourselves.”

A battle of arguments and counterarguments makes itself visible in Owen’s face before he gives in.

“Yeah, alright.”

He loads an identical gun and hands it to Charlet, who takes it in both hands and aims it at the floor. I can’t say I feel comfortable being at the mercy of the two people I only recently suspected the most, but… it has to be Yuki at this point. Owen and Charlet are both safe. I just need to convince my brain of that.

Owen pushes another button to close the weapons panel and waves his gun at Yuki and me. “To security then.”

We walk in silence through the cafeteria and the remaining corridors. Yuki keeps looking back at every corner, as if to make sure we’re all still here. I can’t tell if she’s planning something or if she’s just trying to look nervous. I try to stay on high alert and be ready to react if she makes any sudden moves. But what happens next is not the fault of anyone’s reflexes. It’s because we didn’t think ahead.

As we take a left into security, Yuki lets her left arm swing just a little too close to the wall. A soft crackle of static electricity comes from her hand as she touches the wall on the other side of the doorway. Still behind the corner, Owen and Charlet are oblivious to her trick.

“Hey!” I say and take Yuki by her wrists. But in doing so, I’m also passing through the doorway.

“What’s going on?” Owen says from behind me and comes closer.

Yuki makes no attempt to escape my hold so I turn my head and nod toward the door panel.

“She did something to the door,” I say.

“No, _he_ did,” Yuki says.

Owen has just entered the room - with Charlet still behind him - when the doors close. Yuki gives us no time to react. In a sudden feat of strength, she shoves herself backwards, slithering out of my grasp and pushing me into Owen. As I try to get back on my feet, she spins around and shoves me back once again before going for the gun. Still trying to find his footing, Owen has no time to aim it. I flail my arms trying to stop her but she deflects every blow and rips the gun from Owen’s hand. I get to my feet in a final attempt to stop her but she just steps away and aims the gun. I stop in place, knowing I’m at her mercy.

So I guess this is it. The alien has the gun. We’re as good as dead.

But instead of shooting right away, the impostor cries out for help. “Charlet! Get in here! Buck is trying to kill us!”

“No, don’t-” I begin.

But a loud _bang_ interrupts the air.

When I open my eyes again, wondering why I don’t feel anything, there’s a heavy thud from behind me. I turn around to find Owen on the floor with a hole in his head. I know I shouldn’t be surprised but the sight is still devastating. There’s no question about it now. We’re all doomed.

“What’s going on?” Charlet shouts from the other side of the door, and I’m reminded of what little hope we have left.

“He shot Owen!” the alien yells from somewhere behind me, sounding as panicked as if someone was holding a gun to her head.

“No, don’t listen to her!” I shout. “She has the gun! Open the door and shoot her!”

“I’m trying!” Charlet shouts back.

I turn away from the doorway and find the alien by the control panel, frantically clicking her way through various programs and warning messages. The gun is resting next to the keyboard. Seeing as her back is turned toward me, I decide to go for a final attempt and sneak up on her. But I have only taken a single step when the impostor grabs the gun in her left hand and aims it at me without looking. I freeze in place, still waiting for her to pull the trigger. But she seems more interested in the computer and I fail to understand why. All she has to do is shoot me and then get the first shot on Charlet.

Just as I wonder why the door hasn’t opened yet, the alien throws the gun toward me in a perfect arc. I catch it and just as I get a good grip to aim, the doors behind me slide open and Charlet speaks.

“Drop the gun.”


	10. Victory

So here we are. Two humans and an alien, standing frozen in the security room, guns in hand and unable to agree on who to shoot. I get it now. This is what the alien wanted. Maybe she wanted me dead instead but after we contradicted each other, that was out of the question. But she wanted Charlet to take the final decision. Because Charlet has a clear preference for who she  _ wants _ to believe.

Her eyes focused on my trigger finger, impostor-Yuki is ready to dodge to survive. Maybe a bullet to the head won't even kill her. She isn't human. And I’ll only get one shot. Charlet won't let me fire twice.

So I do what I have to.

Even with the impostor at the far end of my barrel, I lower my gun and bend down and put it on the floor.

“Good,” Charlet says. “Now up against the wall.”

I move to the wall. The alien does the same thing, though keeping her distance from me. In fact, she looks terrified of me.

“He did something to the computer,” she says.

“Don’t listen to her,” I say. “Anything she says is a lie.”

Charlet picks up the gun I left on the floor and puts it in her pocket. With one gun still pointed at us, she moves toward the computer. She dares peak at the screen once she’s close enough.

“Look,” I say. “We have all the time in the world to work this through. Once-”

“No we don’t,” Charlet says, turning away from the screen. “Someone’s been messing with the reactor coolant flow. We’ve got about five minutes before the reactor blows.”

“So let’s stop it,” I say, taking a half-step toward the exit.

Charlet snaps her aim at me. “No. I can’t fix it on my own and I don’t trust either of you to help me. You get one minute each to convince me you’re human and the other one goes into the airlock.”

“Really?” I say. “This again? I’ve already laid out all the evidence. Pich confirmed Yuki’s pathing, and deflected suspicion toward her. She didn’t vote to throw Pich out and I couldn’t possibly have killed Benny. What more can I say to convince you?”

“You know who to trust,” the impostor says. “Just listen to your heart.”

“No!” I shout desperately. “Fuck the heart! Look at the evidence.”

“Exactly! Who do you think shot Owen?” the impostor counters. “Who was holding the gun when you came in?”

“No,” I say, pointing at the Yuki-looking figure. “She threw the gun toward me at the last second. She knew what it would look like to you. Think about it. If I had the gun all along, why hadn’t I shot her already?”

“Well, that goes for the both of you,” Charlet says. “If she had the gun, why are you still alive?”

“Because…” I start, but I come up empty.

“Please,” the impostor says. “Just trust me. If I were the impostor, I could have killed you several times over. I defended you when nobody else would.”

And now I get it. Now I finally get  _ all _ of it. Charlet is the only one who could fix the lights. We would have been screwed if the aliens had killed her. But they didn’t. When Charlet, Owen and Benny were stuck in the dark in electrical, the Yuki-impostor chose to kill Benny. Not Charlet. She could have framed Owen and lived on, either letting us live or killing us both once we felt safe. But she didn’t.

I turn to Yuki, or the alien impersonating her, or whatever she is.

“Because you don’t want her dead, do you?” I ask. “Whatever happened, the two of you had to survive. That’s why you couldn’t shoot me just now. You  _ had  _ to frame me.”

“What are you talking about?” Charlet asks.

“Because the alien did too good of a job copying Yuki,” I say. “She got the feelings part too.”

The long silence that follows is only broken by the reactor alarm blaring from the speakers.

Charlet points her gun at the impostor. “Is that true?” she asks.

“It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” I say. “If I was the impostor, why would I convince you Pich was the other one when we know that was right? And if Pich was busy ejecting Walter at the start, how come she could confirm Yuki was in medbay? And again, Benny was still alive when I got shut out of electrical.”

“Charlet…” the impostor says. “I can explain everything. But right now, we don’t have time. You need to decide who to shoot. We can talk later.”

Charlet takes a deep breath. “Buck,” she says and waves with her gun toward the exit. “Fix the reactor.”

I nod and hurry out of the room. The reactor room is just across the hallway. I reach the control panel and I navigate through the reactor interface on the screen. I unlock the water tanks to cool down the core and watch the temperature go down to a safe level. The alarm stops. Keeping my ears open, I hurry back to security and breathe out when I find the room the same as I left it.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” the impostor says as I enter the room.

“Oh my mind is more clear than ever,” Charlet says. “You’re not fooling me anymore.”

I bend down to check on Owen, but it’s hopeless. He has no pulse and is bleeding out from his head. I take a moment to breathe out before I stand back up, looking to the impostor and then to Charlet.

“Does this mean you trust me?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

I walk to stand beside Charlet, part of me still afraid that she’ll shoot me.

“So?” Charlet says, still pointing her gun at impostor-Yuki. “Who are you really? And why did you murder our friends?”

The impostor hangs her head and sighs.

“We never wanted any of this. All we wanted was to survive.”

“So why did you kill Walter?” I ask. “You’re the ones who started this.”   
“Because he saw me during the process. He found me lying on the floor, shaking. He wanted to put me on the scan. We couldn’t convince him otherwise. We saw no other solution.”

“So from then on you had to kill all of us.”

“We didn’t want to. We only wanted to make it to earth unnoticed. But we didn’t know how to stage his death as an accident and we didn’t know when the next person would walk through.”

“So you sabotaged the doors to begin with,” I say.

“Yes. We sabotaged the doors, we put him in the airlock and did our best to clean up the blood. In retrospect, we could have feigned an accident but we were still adjusting to these new brains and so we panicked. We hid him in the airlock just in time for you to pass by and then we threw in the spacesuits as well so you wouldn’t try to find him. We hoped we could stage it as a suicide but we forgot that you need two people to open the airlock.”

“And then Pich used the vent to get to medbay and delete our bioinfo.”

The alien shrugs. “We did our best. We were just too late to sabotage the admin table. You found out and we couldn’t count on killing all of you at the same time. We didn’t really want to either. We just wanted to survive.”

“Open the airlock,” I say, pointing at the panel beside the alien.

But she shakes her head. “No. You’ll just blast me into space like you did with Pich. Let me live and I promise I won’t kill you.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Charlet says.

I turn back to the computer and navigate the settings to turn off the double confirmation. Like she said: I’m the only one who can open the airlock by myself.

“Please open it,” Charlet begs from over my shoulder.

“No,” Yuki’s voice says. “You’ll have to shoot me.”

But Charlet’s hands are shaking. And I know how fast the alien can be. Maybe we aren’t the ones in control of this situation after all. The alien didn’t want Charlet dead. But she doesn’t want to die herself either. So if she actually has to pick one over the other…

I execute a final command, having to click through several warnings, before I turn back to the room.

“You’re really not going to get inside?” I ask the impostor. “We could let you live.”

“I don’t trust you.”

I let out a heavy sigh. If that doesn’t just sum up this entire scenario… 

“Give me the gun,” I say, because letting Charlet shoot is neither fair nor safe.

She looks at me, considering for just a moment. Then her hands begin to move toward me and just as the gun points away from its target, the alien leaps out toward us.

Charlet shoots but she’s too slow to regain her aim and the alien is fast. She reaches us in a few steps and gets a grip of the barrel of the gun. I manage to tackle the alien to the ground before she can pry it loose but she takes me down with her. As we fall, she somehow spins us around to land on top of me. I’ve only just hit the floor when I’m lifted up onto my knees and feel my arms lock behind my back and heavy breathing on my neck. I’m turned facing Charlet, who’s by the wall, aiming one of the guns at us. The other one has fallen to the floor behind her.

“You know I don’t want you any harm,” the alien says to Charlet. “He’s the problem here. Either you kill him or I do.”

I kick hard behind me but the alien just takes the blow without losing balance. I try to turn my body but it only results in my arms being lifted higher up behind my back and my shoulders feel like they’re going to pop off their sockets.

“Fine,” Charlet says. “You win.”

“No don’t-” I begin, but my words are useless.

Charlet throws the gun across the room, out of reach for both of us. I’m pushed forward and stumble into Charlet. She pushes me aside and I turn around just in time to find the alien by the airlock, aiming the gun at me. She pulls the trigger and I think I’ve breathed my last breath.

But the gun clicks.

The impostor, with Yuki’s face and straight blonde hair in a mess after the fight, turns to Charlet with a look of utter disappointment and betrayal.

“Yeah,” Charlet says from the control panel. “I know the feeling.”

She presses a button and I recognize which button even from my place on the floor. I had the same idea before the fistfight and Charlet must have seen that the outer door of the airlock opened. Because now she opens the inner door too.

As soon as the door slides open, the air inside the room is pushed out into the vacuum of space. Standing by the other end of the room, I feel little more than a gust of wind. But to the alien, the air trying to escape is enough to push her violently backward. She tries to find her balance but fails miserably. She falls to her back and rolls off the platform, out into the empty void beyond.

Charlet pushes another button and the glass door shuts and the wind stops. The world is suddenly very quiet and still. I take a deep breath and stand up. Is it really over?

“Was the gun not loaded?” I ask, trying to understand what just happened.

“That was Owen’s gun,” Charlet says. “I guess she removed the magazine before she let you have it.”

“But how did you know?”

“I tried to shoot while you two were fighting. But…” Charlet trails off and stares into the distance.

I walk up to the control panel and shut the outer door to the airlock.

“We should check the ship’s scan,” I say. “Just to be safe.”

We leave the room and move to admin and start a lifeform scan of the ship. I find my mind going back to key moments. Moments where I could have - or maybe  _ should _ have - died. If I hadn’t been behind Benny in the dark, would I have died instead? Would he have lived? Could he have made a better case for why Yuki was guilty, avoiding Owen’s death? I don’t know. I can’t know. But it’s also useless to think about. Dwelling on the past is an automatic response but it won’t help anything. I just need to convince my brain of that. But you can’t just decide to not think about something. It’s like you’re trapped inside your own head, being pushed back and forth with no control over the waves. But at least I’m not alone.

“What’s going through your mind?” I ask Charlet.

She shakes her head, struggling to get any words out at first. “I don’t know. It’s just… this is some shit soufflé we’ve been served.”

“Yeah.” I stare at the screen, not knowing what else to say.

“We’re safe, right?” Charlet asks. “It’s over.”

“I think so,” I say. “I just want it confirmed.”

The loading bar on the screen reaches eighty percent and I’m reminded of when I first scanned the ship just earlier today. It had started at twelve. Two too many. Then ten, then nine. One by one, our crew decreased. Walter, Rachel, Lee, Grady, Pich, Benny, Owen… Yuki. Was there any piece of the real Yuki in that thing? I suppose we’ll never know for sure.

The admin table beeps and the screen shows an equally relieving and devastating message.

TWO LIFEFORMS FOUND

Charlet sniffles and wipes at her cheek. “It’s supposed to say ten,” she says.

She turns around and for a second I’m afraid she’ll attack me. But her outstretched arms embrace me instead and she starts weeping. We stand there for a long while. Hugging. Crying. Letting it all out. When my legs get too tired, I sit down by the wall and Charlet sits down beside me. The tears run out at some point and we just sit there, exhausted.

“Will we even make it back to earth?” Charlet asks. “All I want to do is sleep. Preferably forever.”

“I’m tired too,” I say. “But we have to keep going. If we don’t get back home, this mission was all for nothing.”

“So maybe it was.”

“Then how will they know?” I say. “How will their families know what happened to them? How will the earth know that there are shapeshifting aliens out there, ready to kill to get what they want?”

“What  _ do  _ they want?”

“They wanted to get to earth unnoticed, that’s all we know so far. But why? To find a new place to live? To enslave humanity? We don’t know the rest of it. We have to expect the worst.”

Charlet lets out a long sigh. “Yeah. It’s an ugly story but someone has to tell it.”

I get up and look at the screen on the table, finding the time in the corner. It’s half past nine, not even past our usual bedtime. It really doesn’t feel like everything that happened today only took in less than eight hours, but that’s what the clock says. Feels more like seven days.

“We should probably eat something,” I say, even though I don’t feel hungry at all.

“Yeah,” Charlet says. “Put food in stomachs.”

“As long as it’s not shit soufflé,” I say.

Charlet smiles at that. I try to hold my laughter in but then Charlet starts laughing and it’s hopeless. For a long while, we just stand there laughing, like a couple of idiots processing trauma in a strangely relieving way. 

We find six nutrition bars to share for dinner. I suppose that’s what we’ll live on for the rest of the journey, in the lack of someone who can cook.

We decide to make a final effort to deal with the aftermath of our strange reality. We carry Benny and Owen to the beds in medbay, where Rachel is still lying peacefully. Thanks to the ship’s emergency cryogenic treatment, we can seal them in cold tubes to slow the rate at which their bodies will decompose. In some weird way, it almost feels like we’re still five people left on the ship.

Once that’s dealt with, we go to bed. I mostly just lie there, tired but awake, trying to not think about all the horrible things we’ve witnessed. After a while, I find another chain of thought to pursue.

Where did the aliens come from? They only showed up after we left Polus so… did they live there somehow? And did they evolve there or…?

Polus is a fuel station for ships heading in this general direction. Another ship meant to check on the Teegarden system should have landed on Polus just four months ago. So what if  _ they _ found life, brought back a sample and… something went wrong? Did their ship crash on Polus, spreading alien life over the planet? Or did they head back to home as planned, but accidentally left samples of their findings on Polus? Because something must have gone wrong for their samples to end up on our ship.

I suppose we’ll see in three months from now. Even if both of our two aliens got thrown to space, we got their scan data. Sure, their DNA can somehow mimic ours but there has to be something that’s different. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to hide their bioinfo. Charlet and I don’t understand the scans but someone on Mira Headquarters will. And then we might have a way to identify these aliens. Because I’ve got a feeling that one day, we’ll run into them again. Maybe as soon as we land on Mira HQ, maybe some day in the far future. But when we do, we’ll be ready.


End file.
